One user, no deals yet. Do I pay someone to configure it or fumble through it myself?

I sell this work and I'd turn you down at your stage. Not because your money is bad, because you'd be paying me to invent a process for you and then paying me again in six months when your real process shows up. Build it yourself badly. Come back when you have volume that hurts.

@cobalt that's a more honest answer than I expected from someone who bills for it. Though I'd push back a little. Anchor, there's a difference between paying for a full build and paying someone for two hours to sit with you while you set up the basics. The second one is cheap and you keep the understanding. Ask if anyone will sell you that shape.

Thirty properties passed on isn't nothing. That's the most valuable thing in your spreadsheet, honestly. Why you passed, at what price. I'd care more about capturing that in a way you can search later than about which tool holds it.

I spent six months researching and closed zero deals, so this question is one I've chewed on plenty. I built my own in a free tier and the useful thing wasn't the system, it was that I had to decide what a stage meant. What does contacted actually mean, what does dead mean. I couldn't have outsourced that decision because I didn't know the answer until I was forced to type it.

Small multifamily, and I only got a real CRM at unit twelve. Before that a spreadsheet with a follow-up date column did everything. What broke it was other people. The second a bookkeeper and a leasing helper needed to see the same record, the spreadsheet stopped working. One user is not the case a CRM exists for.

@cairn is right about the trigger being the second person, but I'd add the second one. Mine was volume of follow-up, not headcount. When I had roughly sixty live conversations at different stages I could no longer hold who was owed a call, and that's when paying someone was worth it. Anchor, you're at maybe a dozen. Do it yourself and spend the money on a title search instead.