Messy leads. Silent clients. I was drowning. I thought the fix was some fancy CRM. Big dashboards. Automations. All the fields. Turns out, it wasn’t. What I really needed was fewer leaks. A client pipeline I could actually live with.
So I tried an experiment. One week inside a simple Notion board. Every prospect, every deal, every follow-up—all tracked in one place. No excuses. No “I’ll log it later.” Just me and my pipeline. And the truth showed up faster than I expected.
Table of Contents
Day 1 – Setting Up a Bare Pipeline
Day 1 felt almost… too simple. I opened a blank Notion board. Five stages: Prospect → Contacted → Proposal Sent → Won → Lost. That was it. No automations. No tags. Just columns. Honestly, I thought I was missing something.
But maybe that was the point. My old CRM had a hundred fields I never touched. Territory codes. Deal probability. Lead source. None of it mattered when I wasn’t even sending follow-ups. What I needed was clear deal tracking. A sales workflow that forced me to move things forward.
For the first time, all my prospects sat in one client pipeline. No sticky notes. No random DMs. No half-lost emails. Just one board. And seeing it—really seeing it—already felt different.
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Day 2 – Almost Breaking My Own Sales Workflow
By Day 2, I almost sabotaged myself. I started adding fields. Industry. Urgency. Estimated revenue. Suddenly my clean board looked bloated again. Heavy. Sluggish. Just like the CRM I ditched months earlier.
That night, I deleted them all. Only three survived: deal value, last contact, next action. Enough to track momentum without drowning in data. That’s when it clicked—sales productivity isn’t about more information. It’s about fewer excuses.
Notion had become my deal tracking tool. A light CRM alternative I actually touched daily. Usable beat sophisticated. And honestly, that was the first real win.
Day 3 – The Follow-up Shock in My Lead Tracking
Day 3 was brutal. I looked at my client pipeline and half my prospects were stuck in “Contacted.” No movement. No next step. Just dead weight. And the truth hit me—I wasn’t sending follow-ups.
Out of sight, out of mind. That silence was killing my close rate. A freelancer once told me, “If you don’t track your follow-ups, you’re basically tracking your losses.” He was right. Painfully right.
So I made a rule. Every deal must have a “Next Action.” Email. Call. Even wait—but it had to be logged. No exceptions. Suddenly my sales workflow didn’t feel like a graveyard. It felt alive again. Deals moved. Proposals resurfaced. My deal tracking wasn’t just showing me where things died—it was keeping them alive.
I even compared it with my old CRM alternative. The difference was embarrassing. The big tool buried me in data. Notion, simple as it was, made me act. That shift alone boosted my sales productivity in days.
Day 4 – The Graph That Exposed My Close Rate
Then came the graph. I grouped deals by stage inside Notion. The chart was ugly. Nearly 60% of my client pipeline was jammed at “Proposal Sent.” A proposal graveyard. My sales funnel wasn’t too small—it was leaking right in the middle.
I had joked about it before. But now I had proof. Numbers staring at me. That night, I fired off three simple follow-up emails. Nothing fancy. Just: “Hey, still considering this?” Two replies landed within hours. That graph forced my hand. Without it, I’d still be leaking deals quietly.
For the first time, Notion wasn’t just client management. It was my sales productivity tool. A funnel I could actually trust. A lightweight CRM alternative that finally showed me where the leaks were hiding.
Day 5–7 – Routine Kicks In and Deal Flow Shifts
By Day 5, the experiment didn’t feel like an experiment anymore. It felt like muscle memory. Every morning, coffee in hand, I opened the board. I moved deals. Logged follow-ups. Updated values. Nothing fancy, just consistent. And consistency started compounding fast.
The strangest part? My stress dropped. For months, I thought I needed more leads. More outreach. More hustle. But it wasn’t true. My real problem was losing the leads I already had. Proposal tracking fixed that. Suddenly my close rate wasn’t about luck—it was about discipline.
By Day 6, the rhythm was automatic. Call. Log. Email. Log. Review. Log. The system almost ran itself. Notion wasn’t just a board anymore. It had become my client pipeline. A sales workflow that kept me accountable. And accountability, it turns out, is what actually closes deals.
By Day 7, I had numbers to back it up. The difference wasn’t subtle—it was obvious. Here’s what the before-and-after looked like:
The data was clear. Notion didn’t just tidy my leads. It fixed my leaks. My sales funnel finally had movement instead of blockages. And that simple consistency turned into higher revenue—without chasing more clients, without killing myself with outreach.
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Final Thoughts – What Changed in My Sales Funnel & Close Rate
I didn’t need more leads. I needed fewer leaks. That was the lesson. My deals weren’t dying because I lacked prospects. They were dying in silence—missed follow-ups, forgotten proposals, no next steps. Notion turned that silence into structure. And structure brought deals back to life.
Honestly, I expected it to feel clunky. Like a workaround. But it didn’t. It felt natural, even fast. By the end of the week, I realized something most freelancers don’t want to admit: a simple client pipeline you actually touch every day beats a bloated CRM alternative you abandon after a week.
Before You Try
- ✅ Keep your sales workflow simple
- ✅ Every lead needs one next action
- ✅ Track proposals until they convert
- ✅ Review your deal flow weekly
- ✅ Don’t let follow-up emails slip
Notion wasn’t just another tool—it became my sales productivity tool. A client pipeline I could finally live with. I still use this setup every morning, and it hasn’t let me down yet.
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Funny thing is, the fix wasn’t about being smarter. It was just finally showing up for the system I already had. And once I did, everything shifted—close rate, peace of mind, even how my U.S. clients responded to me.
I wish someone had told me earlier. Would’ve saved me months of lost deals. What about you—are your deals really lost, or just waiting on silence?
Hashtags
#NotionSalesPipeline #FreelancerCRM #CloseMoreDeals #LeadTracking
Sources
- Freelancers Union – freelancersunion.org
- HubSpot Sales Blog – hubspot.com/sales
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