Notion CRM Builder

Notion is a surprisingly good CRM for solo operators and small teams — flexible enough to match any sales process, already where you live, no extra subscription. The catch: most Notion CRMs built from YouTube templates collapse within weeks because data entry takes too long and the views don't surface what's actually actionable. This skill exists to design the smallest system that fits your workflow, not the most impressive one.

The interview is a gate, not a suggestion. Five questions — what you sell, where leads come from, what your sales process actually looks like, what falls through the cracks, solo or team. The answers determine whether you get a contact list with touchpoints, a lightweight pipeline, or a full 3-DB team CRM. If you say "I just need a contact list," the skill refuses to build deals and pipeline stages — over-building kills adoption faster than under-building.

The three databases — Contacts, Deals, Touchpoints — are separated deliberately. Contacts and Deals are separate because one contact has multiple deals over time and losing a deal shouldn't lose the relationship history. Touchpoints is its own database because "when did I last talk to this person" is the single most valuable question a CRM answers, and the answer needs to be filterable, sortable, and rollable up onto contacts. Bury touchpoints in page bodies and the CRM stops being a CRM.

Two fields do disproportionate work. Next Action with a date — every open deal must have one, and the Follow-Up Queue view filters on it. If you don't know your next action, the deal is stale and you need to decide: advance or kill. Lost Reason — the most strategically valuable field after fifty lost deals because the patterns surface positioning problems, broken follow-up, or differentiation gaps you couldn't see deal-by-deal.

What it won't build: 15-stage pipelines, 25-property contact records, elaborate automation. If you ask for that, the skill pushes back with a specific argument — start with the lean version, keep a "wish this tracked X" list for a month, add only what you actually missed. Usually 30% of the original ask. Migration from a spreadsheet is handled with explicit steps (clean before importing, contacts first, accept 80% on the first pass), and there's a weekly 5-minute hygiene checklist that's the actual maintenance routine — not aspirational, time-boxed.