From HubSpot to a simple and fast CRM for nurturing relationships

In the energy industry, coming up with an idea is hard. But what’s even harder is turning that idea into a real business. That’s why people go to Roelof Reineman.

Roelof is an independent consultant in the energy sector, working with companies across Europe to build a business around their innovations. He started his business in 2020, after leaving a Dutch utility company.

Roelof’s business is the kind that thrives on relationships. To grow, he finds the right people and earns their trust over time.

That’s why, although he has a website, it doesn’t work for selling. For him, making sales is a matter of nurturing relationships with prospective clients.

But with dozens of those relationships in motion at once, he needed a way to keep track of them all.

Starting with Outlook and memory

At the start, Roelof kept track of all his relationships using Outlook and common sense.

Then Microsoft released Outlook Customer Manager, and for the first time, Roelof could nurture his relationships without memorizing every detail. The tool told him when to reply and when he’d last spoken to a contact—work he’d been doing manually and from memory.

Then Microsoft discontinued the product, and Roelof was right back where he started. So, he started looking for something else.

Moving to HubSpot

The search led him to HubSpot. The pricing looked good at first, and it came with a built-in CMS, so he moved his website over, too.

But as time went on, HubSpot stopped fitting.

The tool that was supposed to help him run his business more efficiently started slowing him down. So, he resumed his search.

And that finally led him to OnePageCRM.

The beauty of Next Actions

What sold Roelof was the first thing OnePageCRM shows you: a single list where every contact has a next step. It’s the action-focused idea that the product is built around.

For Roelof, that lined up with a philosophy he already followed: David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and its one question, “what’s your next action?”

Every Next Action nurtures a relationship, and since it’s those relationships that grow his business, business is always moving forward.

Playing the long game

To make his business run even more efficiently, Roelof created a process, split into two stages.

The first is the acquisition. New relationships start on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, where he responds to messages, gets to know someone, and looks for a spark of interest.

Once the contact is ideal, they move into OnePageCRM for stage two.

From there, it’s a long game. And since a contact can take years to become a client, his next actions are to nurture, not close.

In fact, one of his recent projects came from someone he’d known for more than a decade.

Sales like this only happen if your relationship with the client never goes cold. And that’s one of the reasons Roelof appreciates his new CRM. OnePageCRM flags any contact left without a next action, so no relationship is left unattended by accident.

But that’s not the only reason Roelof’s stayed with the CRM.

Follow-up discipline

Roelof doesn’t have a sales background, so building relationships and following up consistently wasn’t very easy for him. Until OnePageCRM, that is.

The other CRMs he tried leaned toward logging and storing, more database than daily sales to-dos. But OnePageCRM keeps the focus on the next move, and Roelof credits it with a habit he didn’t have on his own.

Other useful perks

There are other features that Roelof admits make his day-to-day work more efficient.

For one, as his contact list grows, he leans on email templates to keep his outreach quick. There’s the AI summary that gives him the short version of a contact’s long history. And the Pipeline has been quite useful for him, as well.

Not to mention how responsive the OnePageCRM app itself has been. Even though he uses Safari—instead of the recommended Chrome Browser—the app still runs fast.

For a solo consultant who sells through relationships rather than a funnel, a CRM like OnePageCRM is just what the doctor ordered. The Action Stream keeps conversations and relationships alive, and every Next Action makes sure the timing never passes him by.