Hi, I’m Sharon Gutierrez, owner of a consulting business and Co-Founder of Pretty Simple. As solopreneurs, many of us wear all the hats—from sales to operations—often juggling countless responsibilities while striving to grow our businesses. Today, I want to talk about a critical challenge we face: effective lead tracking. Without the right tools, we risk losing opportunities, wasting time, and ultimately, leaving money on the table.

Let’s dive into why lead tracking is a common struggle for solopreneurs and explore some practical ways to overcome it.

What Is a Solopreneur? 

Let’s start off with discussing what a solopreneur is:

 A  solopreneur is an entrepreneur who is either running their business on their own, or with a small team but they are managing most of the sales and operations solo. 

Being a solopreneur used to be the first step in business and the ultimate goal was to have a ton of employees and have a nice office. While  that’s definitely true for some people,  there are more than a few of us who have chosen solopreneurship as a lifestyle. 

I chose solopreneurship as the foundation for my lifestyle and consulting business after spending 10 years running an agency. Today, I’m thrilled with how my business, Compliments of Sharon, operates with just myself and my two amazing marketing assistants. Additionally, I co-own Pretty Simple, a lead tracking app designed for solopreneurs and small businesses. While this venture is ultimately intended to scale differently, we’re currently managing it as a solopreneurship with our tight-knit, two-person team.

Struggle is Real: Effective Lead Tracking 

I created Pretty Simple because I needed a way to track leads with my own consulting company. Here are some of the struggles I had: 

#1. I lost money on deals because I wasn’t organized.

The first company I had was a digital marketing agency that I started in my mid 20’s. I ran that company for about 10 years before moving to full time consulting. I learned a LOT of lessons in that business, and one of them was learning the art of the follow up. 

I grew that company from networking and speaking, similar to what I do now, and I struggled for the entire 10 years trying to find a way to track leads. I would have people tell me they are interested, I would follow up for a 1:1 and usually close from there. I remember one specific day where I went to a networking group I would attend semi-regularly and I saw a real estate agent I had met a few times, and she immediately called me out: “I told you last time I saw you I was interested in working with you, but you never followed up. I went with someone else.” 

I was devastated and embarrassed – I remembered the conversation, I could have swore I sent an email, but never followed up. That really launched me into a journey of trying to find a solution to keeping track of my leads better. Just a quick side note, I ended up going with spreadsheets instead of anything else, but that’s another story. 

#2. I was spending time doing the wrong things. 

Okay, strap in because this is a crazy realization from using Pretty Simple for lead tracking. From my entire career I know my leads come from networking, speaking and social media generally. I don’t do a lot of SEO for my consulting business because it’s hyper competitive. 

A while back I knew for sure that I get more leads from networking than anything else – so I naturally would put my energy there. In Pretty Simple we have it set up so you can see your top three lead “sources” and the dollar amount tied to them. When receiving my numbers I saw that I was correct, I did get way more clients from networking versus other sources but there are two things I didn’t realize:

First, my second highest source was referrals. I had 3x more leads from networking than the second highest source which referrals. The second realization was that referrals was my second highest contribution, which wasn’t really even on my radar. The third thing I realized was that my 3 referral clients in that time period was an equal dollar amount to my 10 networking leads. My value for referral clients was insanely higher per client and so I was able to re-focus my energy there. 

Moral of the story, without tracking leads I had no idea where my money was coming from, and no idea where my best clients were coming from.

#3. I didn’t know how long it took to close a deal. 

Your sales cycle is the average number of days it takes to close a deal, and most solopreneurs and small businesses have zero idea what their average sales cycle is, and that’s totally fine but here are two reasons why it’s helpful: 

• It helps you better plan your revenue.

 If you know most of your deals take 90 days to close, the effort you put into getting leads won’t show actual cash until about 3 months from now. Deal with cash flow issues is incredibly common in small businesses, and this is an amazing way to be able to help plan and adjust for it. 

•  You can evaluate where people are getting stuck and make decisions to help shorten your sales cycle.

 I had one client where they will often split their sales calls into two separate calls because it would take longer than the allotted time to close. Not only did it extend the sales cycle, but resulted in more deals being lost. When we could look at the closing notes and see that most more than 50% of leads ghosted between the first and second calls we simply allotted more time for the sales calls, which not only increased the number of leads won but also reduced the sales cycle. 

#4. There was WAY more money in my pipeline than I thought – and I was again, spending time on the wrong things. 

Off the top of your head, can you tell me the value of all the potential clients you have right now? Every single time that I’ve had a client put in their leads and see the potential value of their leads, they are surprised at how much money is on the table! Not only that, you can immediately see if most of your leads are warm, hot or cold. Here is a quick client snapshot: 

You can see that they have most of their leads in the warm stage, and nothing in the hot stage. If I was wanting to start increasing my revenue quickly I would put energy into moving those warm leads into hot as soon as possible.

You can move your warm leads to hot by following up. My two favorite ways to follow up, depending on the relationship with the lead are either direct – Hi Susan, I wanted to check to see if you wanted to move forward with your website build now or wait a little longer. Are you free tomorrow or Monday to chat about it? OR a more gentle approach of – Hi Susan, I just wrote this blog about optimizing sites in your industry, here is the link. Were you wanting to talk about getting your site started or did you need a little more time? Let me know! 

#5. I didn’t know what types of deals were being lost and couldn’t plan how to fix it. 

I recently was reviewing all of my leads that were lost last year and for almost 70% of them it was because a sales call never happened or happened too long after the initial contact took place. I even had one lead who explicitly said they needed to work with me, but needed to wait a couple of months for something to finish. I followed up on their timeline, and she had said she forgot and went with someone else. 

Maybe that deal was never meant to be, but one tactic I can try this year is to make sure sales calls happen sooner, even if they aren’t ready to start quite yet. 

Final Thoughts

With solopreneurship, tracking leads often fall through the cracks. Without the right tools, we risk losing opportunities, wasting time, and focusing on the wrong priorities.

Lead tracking isn’t just about staying organized—it’s about knowing where your clients come from, how long deals take to close, and what drives your revenue. Tools like Pretty Simple help you stay on top of your pipeline, prioritize high-value opportunities, and plan for growth.

Start your 14-day free trial now!