Small businesses - how to manage your customer data etc?

[Haint]

I. Am. Drowning

Many clients, very high value work, varying shifting timescales, strict deadlines, a historic mess to try and get a hold on.

Do i need a CMS? if so which one?

It's not particularly sales driven (more work than can currently handle) i just need all the info, deadlines, quotes, tasks, communications in one place

Same here . I think I need to just find a system and stick with it, I keep thinking that the holy grail of organisational tools is out there somewhere, so chop and change. I was using Evernote for a bit, then went on to Trello, now having some joy with Todoist which integrates well with Outlook.

Sometimes I feel I'd be better off just using a big notebook to write everything in!

I use HubSpot which works well for me

@Haint when I feel like you do, the issue is the level of work as opposed to my system. Although I do focus in on the system, hoping that it will deliver the answer.

I liked the look of Trello but struggled to keep it up-to-date and actually a pen and paper works as well for me.

What can you outsource? I have recently started working with a great VA, it has really helped move stuff along.

THanks for these suggestions, I'll check them out. Not really sure there's much I can outsource. Perhaps some accounts stuff but it's more managing day to day communications and processing of orders, tracking them through until completion, updating clients, arranging deliveries, remembering each of the 400 conversations I'm having each day