If it's one user and only ever one user, then Notion can work and provides a nice writing surface for note taking.

If the number of users is expected to grow then get a real sales CRM. I actually did exactly this: I was the only user of Pipedrive at my company for a year. It was a lonely experience. When our sales team finally grew to include more people they were very happy that I had rigorously populated deals, customers, contacts and organization data to help them ramp up quickly in their new roles.

Hello Stuart! Check out Bigin by Zoho CRM. It's lightweight, simple and works perfectly for your sales/pipeline tracking needs with built-in telephony, email and pipeline customisation.

I've used Streak for about a year and it's worked great/would recommend. I've also heard very positive things about Pipedrive, but haven't used it myself.

I like Monday.com for an easy and flexible solution.

Pipedrive is lightweight and you can easily scale up. It’s easy to use and super affordable.

Definitely start with HubSpot free suite. You get a taste of a full tech stack, the learning curve is independently manageable (great UI, top-rated support, clear and navigable help docs), and you have tons of room to grow down the road both within platform via upgrade, or by connecting other integrations.

I have actually worked with two different clients who brought my team in for a business tech evaluation because individual salespeople of theirs had spun up their own HubSpot instances and were crushing it in terms of better workload management, etc. https://app.hubspot.com/signup/sales

@stuartdsmith Have them check out PhoneBurner.com - a great an affordable light weight CRM with a built in power dialer for lighting fast prospecting and contact management all in one.

You can use Notion for that. Here's a setup:
- a table for contacts
- a kanban board for deals linked to the contacts table (you can move deals across the pipeline)
- optionally a table for the last time you contacted each contact and when to contact again
- you can use Notion reminders for future contacts