Answer the inquiry during the dinner break, not next week
Say a couple’s inquiry about an October wedding lands while you’re shooting someone else’s. During the dinner break, you add them from your phone: names, date, venue, what they want, where they found you. By morning they’re in your Inquiry column with a note on who’s replying. Nothing lives in your DMs.
Name the columns the way your studio talks: Inquiry, Consult, Proposal sent, Booked. Each card carries the amount you proposed, so you can see $10,600 in proposals waiting on an answer, and which ones have gone quiet since the consult.
When the restaurant you shot last spring comes back for a new menu, their page is one click away: the marketing lead’s notes, the last quote, the April job, the starred note that they hate hard shadows. That’s a CRM for photographers that turns a past client into the next booking, and the referral they send into the one after.
Next Tuesday. The inquiry from Saturday’s reception is on your board and answered before 9, your editor knows which shots go black and white, and last week’s quiet proposal gets its follow-up before lunch.
See the sales pipelineTry it: drag the $7,400 card to Booked.