Define Your CRM Requirements
Figure out what your team actually needs vs. what you're paying for
Why Most CRMs Are Overkill
If you're using Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive, you're probably paying for hundreds of features you've never touched. Most small teams use the same handful of CRM capabilities: tracking contacts, managing deals through a pipeline, and logging activities. Everything else is bloat you're subsidizing.
Before you build anything, spend 20 minutes figuring out exactly what you need. This step saves hours of wasted development later.
Audit Your Current Usage
Open your current CRM and answer these questions honestly:
- What pages do you visit every day? (Pipeline view? Contact list? Dashboard?)
- What actions do you take most often? (Add a contact? Move a deal? Log a call?)
- What do you wish worked differently? (Faster search? Custom fields? Better mobile view?)
- What features have you never used? (Probably most of them.)
Write down the daily-use features. That's your Phase 1 build list.
Core CRM Features to Build
Almost every CRM replacement needs these four things:
Contacts — People and companies, with custom fields for your specific business. Name, email, phone, company, and whatever metadata matters to you (deal size, source, last contacted date).
Pipeline — A visual board showing deals moving through stages. Your stages should match your actual sales process — not some generic template. If you have three stages, build three. Don't add seven because Salesforce has seven.
Activities — A log of interactions (calls, emails, meetings, notes) attached to contacts and deals. This is your team's memory of every relationship.
Search and filters — The ability to quickly find any contact or deal by name, company, status, or custom field. If search is slow, nobody will use the CRM.
What to Skip (For Now)
Don't build these in Phase 1: email integration, automated sequences, reporting dashboards, territory management, forecasting, AI scoring. These are all useful, but none of them are necessary to replace your CRM for daily use. You can add them later — one prompt at a time.