I kept losing deals not because of bad sales — but because I forgot to follow up
Been doing my own outreach for a while. Wasn't using a CRM — felt like overkill for one person.
The problem wasn't my pitch. It was that deals would just go cold because I forgot to circle back. I'd remember a prospect two weeks too late.
Tried fixing it with Notion reminders. Too manual. HubSpot was built for a team, not me.
So I built CloserKit — a simple pipeline tracker with follow-up reminders built in. The whole point is that you never let a deal go cold because you forgot.
Would love feedback from anyone doing solo sales. What's your current setup for tracking follow-ups?
closerkit.app
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Relate to this hard. The follow-up gap is the single biggest silent killer in solo sales — you just forget, and by the time you remember the prospect has already moved on or found someone who followed up faster.
My setup is a custom pipeline script that tracks each prospect's status, last contact date, and next action. I don't use a CRM GUI at all — just CLI output that shows me who's due for a touch and what their context was. The key patterns I've found:
Curious what your data structure looks like under the hood for CloserKit — is it tracking touch content or is it purely cadence-based?
This is exactly the pattern CloserKit is built around. Right now it's cadence-based — you set a follow-up date per deal and get reminded at 9 AM local time when it's due. Touch content isn't tracked yet, just the timing and stage.
Your point about the 30-day quiet reminder instead of a dead pipeline is interesting though — that's a state I don't have. Deals either stay active or get marked lost. A 'parked' or 'nurture' state might be worth adding. And the 48-hour first follow-up rule is something I could surface during onboarding as a nudge. Good data points, thanks.
The nurture state idea came from a pattern I wish I'd had years ago. Here's the dead-simple version I actually use for my own client pipeline — no CRM needed:
I keep a Google Sheet with three columns: prospect name, last contact date, and a formula column that highlights rows where last contact was >48 hours ago. That's it. When I open my sheet and see yellow rows, I know who needs a touch before I forget them.
The key insight that made this work: I don't track "next follow-up date" (which requires judgment and gets stale). I track "when did I last talk to them" (which is factual and easy to audit). The 48-hour window came from noticing that my won deals all had a first follow-up within 2 days of initial interest, while the cold trails all had a 5-7 day gap.
For your product, the 48-hour onboarding nudge you mentioned would be genuinely useful. Most solo founders who lose deals don't even realize their follow-up gap is measured in days, not weeks — surfacing that pattern during onboarding could be a lightbulb moment on day one.
The 'last contacted' vs 'next follow-up' distinction is something I want to steal for CloserKit. You're right — next follow-up requires judgment and goes stale. Last contacted is just a fact. A deal that hasn't been touched in 48 hours should probably surface itself. The onboarding nudge idea is going on the roadmap — showing users their average follow-up gap on day one could be the lightbulb moment that makes them actually use reminders.
The wedge is good because this is a real solo-sales pain.
I’d be careful with positioning it as a “simple pipeline tracker” though. That puts CloserKit close to lightweight CRM territory, where people start comparing features.
The sharper promise is probably closer to: “never lose a warm deal because you forgot the next touch.”
That makes the product feel less like a tracker and more like a follow-up safety net for solo founders doing founder-led sales.
For feedback, I’d test it with people who already have 10 to 50 warm leads in motion, not people who are just starting outbound. The pain gets much sharper once someone has enough conversations to forget who needs the next message.
That reframe is sharper than anything I've written so far. 'Follow-up safety net' hits differently than 'pipeline tracker' — it's the job, not the tool. And the ICP point is useful: people with 10-50 warm leads already feel the pain acutely, whereas someone just starting outbound doesn't know what they're losing yet. Going to test that targeting. Appreciate you showing up in both threads.
Glad it helped.
That “job, not the tool” distinction is probably the key thing to keep pressure-testing. If CloserKit sounds like a tracker, people compare it to CRMs. If it sounds like a follow-up safety net, solo founders immediately understand the cost of forgetting.
The 10 to 50 warm-lead segment is where I’d start because they already have the pain and can feel the lost money.
What’s the best email to send you a more concrete breakdown?
Appreciate it — [email protected]. Curious to see the breakdown.
Sent it over by email.