The CRM, right-sized.
Also called: Customer database · Contact system · Order & lead tracker · Customer record-keeping
One simple place to track leads, pre-orders, customer records and after-sales, sized for a small team launching direct to consumers.
A CRM is just an organised list of the people who might buy and the people who have. For a launch, a spreadsheet or a light tool beats an enterprise CRM you will never fill. Capture leads and pre-orders, keep order history, hold support contacts. No more.
What a CRM system is
CRM stands for customer-relationship management, which sounds heavier than it is. Strip the acronym away and a CRM is an organised list of two kinds of people: the ones who might buy (leads and pre-orders) and the ones who already have (customers). Plus enough notes against each name to serve them well. That is the whole job.
The mistake at launch is reaching for the same tool a 200-seat sales floor uses. Those systems are built for pipelines, forecasting, territory management and a dozen things a two-person DTC launch does not have. You spend a week configuring fields you will never fill, and the actual list of customers ends up in your inbox anyway. Right-sizing means choosing the simplest thing that captures a lead and supports a customer, and stopping there.
A right-sized CRM does two jobs and does them reliably. It captures, so no pre-order or enquiry falls through a gap. And it supports, so when a customer emails about a warranty claim eighteen months later, you can find what they bought and when, in seconds, not hunt through a year of email. Everything beyond capture and support is weight you do not need yet.
The right-sized CRM, the proofing box
Here is what the system looked like for the proofing box we ran through launch, so you can see the shape of a lean CRM rather than a generic template.
Notice the system answers questions a two-person team actually has, and ignores the ones it doesn’t. The point is not the tool. The point is that every name is captured and every customer can be supported.
- Dozens of pipeline stages and lead scores for a list of pre-orders.
- A week of setup before a single name goes in.
- A monthly per-seat fee that dwarfs a launch budget.
- Fields nobody fills, so the real list lives in your inbox anyway.
- One list of leads and pre-orders, captured the day they arrive.
- Order history you can search in seconds for a support call.
- Warranty contacts logged against each batch.
- Running by the end of the afternoon, not the end of the week.
How it fits the bigger picture
CRM system is activity 10.10.02 in the framework, inside Stage 10 Deliver. It sits alongside the launch budget (10.10.03), which decides how much you can spend on tools and fulfilment, and feeds the after-sales and feedback work that follows a launch. Get the CRM right and the launch budget has a real list to plan against.
What it can do
It gives a small team one reliable place for every lead, pre-order and customer, so nothing falls through a gap and any support query maps straight to the order behind it. It turns a launch from a scramble through inboxes into a list you can actually work.
What it can’t do
It can’t sell for you, and it won’t fix a product nobody wants. A tidy list of leads is only worth keeping if there’s a real offer behind it. And a right-sized CRM is deliberately not a forecasting engine; if you genuinely outgrow it, that is a good problem, and a later upgrade decision, not a launch one.
See the full 10-stage process →
Try it yourself
Open one spreadsheet. Make two tabs: Leads and Customers. On Leads, capture name, email, source and date. On Customers, add order date, what they bought, batch number and a support-notes column. That is a working CRM for a launch. Resist adding a column until a real question forces it. Spend the time you saved talking to the people on the list instead.
Want to size the whole launch around it first? Start the Free Sprint → and the GPT will help you scope what a lean launch actually needs.
Your CRM checklist
Project notes: a spreadsheet, then a tool
▸ From the notebook · optional reading
How Dan and Anna Hartley ran the proofing box’s customer list in Stockport on one spreadsheet, and the day it earned its keep.
3 min read · click to open
Dan wanted to buy a CRM before the box even existed. He’d seen one advertised, monthly fee, lead scoring, the lot. I asked him a blunt question: “How many customers do you have right now?” The answer was zero. So we parked it.
What we set up instead, in an afternoon from their kitchen table in Stockport, was a single shared spreadsheet. One tab for the pre-order waiting list, fed by the DTC site and a post in the Sourdough School community. One tab for confirmed customers, with order date, the £149 unit, the batch number and how they found the box. That was the whole CRM.
The day it earned its keep
About fourteen months in, a customer emailed: the heater on her box had stopped holding temperature. With a real CRM that wasn’t an enterprise CRM, Anna found her in under a minute, order date, batch number, the BS EN 61010 test record for that batch. She could see at a glance the unit was inside warranty and which production run it came from. A replacement went out the same day. No hunting through a year of email, no asking the customer to dig out a receipt.
We pushed them to upgrade only when the spreadsheet genuinely strained, somewhere past 200 orders, when two people editing it at once started clashing. They moved to a light contact tool then, and it took an afternoon to import. The lesson held both ways: don’t buy the big system early, and don’t cling to the spreadsheet out of pride once it’s clearly creaking.
— Deliver stage, project notes, 2026
— Next in Deliver → Launch budget