For founder-led sales, where do you save prospects before they are CRM-worthy?

I’d keep them outside the CRM until there’s a real opportunity. The bigger thing I’d capture isn’t just who they are and when to follow up — it’s why they mattered in the first place.

A few months later, “follow up with John” isn’t very useful. “John mentioned they’re replacing X in Q1 because of Y” gives you an actual reason to restart the conversation.

The context is usually more valuable than the contact record.

I’ve run into the same thing while trying to get better at founder-led distribution. A full CRM feels too serious when the person is just interesting, but random bookmarks become useless pretty fast because I forget why I saved them. What’s helped me is saving the person plus one sentence on the context, because the context is usually the part that disappears. Something like “commented about SEO workflows, might care about content ops later” is way more useful than just saving a profile link.

I handle this with a lightweight 'Radar' view in Notion - a simple table: name, where I met them, what they mentioned struggling with, and a 'next move' field. No statuses, no pipeline stages yet. Just enough to remember who they are and what to say when I see them again.

The CRM only gets someone when there's a concrete next step: call booked, proposal requested, clear fit signal. Everything before that lives in Radar.

The real value: reviewing it every Friday and asking 'who on this list should I touch this week?' That habit is what turns cold contacts into warm ones - not the tool.

The 'CRM-worthy' threshold is where most solo founders lose prospects. You want a lightweight signal log before the formal pipeline - somewhere to capture 'this person has the problem + seems like a fit' before they're ready to move.

What works for me: collapsing the pre-CRM stage into the CRM itself with a 'signal' stage. Instead of a separate Notion page or sticky note, every interesting contact lives in the CRM from the moment they show up - just at 'signal' status, not 'prospect.' The signal note captures where I found them, what the relevant context was, and the first natural action.

The key design principle: make it fast enough to capture in the moment. If adding a contact takes 3 minutes, you'll stop doing it for borderline prospects. If it takes 30 seconds to log a signal note, you capture everything and filter later.

Built exactly this into a Solopreneur OS: the CRM has a 'pre-prospect' stage that's just a light log. Cheap to add, easy to scan, easy to graduate to active prospecting when the time is right.

What's the friction point with existing tools - is it setup cost, the view not matching how you think, or something else?

The 'CRM-worthy' threshold is usually the wrong framing for founder-led sales. If you had the conversation and they seemed remotely interested, they deserve a record - even just name, what they said, and a 'revisit in 3 months' date.

The real problem is that most CRMs feel like enterprise tools requiring stages, pipelines, and mandatory fields. So founders don't use them until the prospect is practically signing - and by then the early context is gone.

I've been building a Notion OS for solopreneurs where the CRM database has very low friction to add someone: name, source, a note, a next action. No deal stages required. It meets you at the level of your actual early-stage sales process.

What's your pre-CRM system right now - notes app, spreadsheet, or nothing?