Notion CRM template: How I use it to Grow My Career

My process in building a CRM tool using Notion

5 min readFeb 12, 2021

As a product builder↗️, I build micro tools to solve my own problems. For example article tool, event app, meal box app, finance tracker, SaaS tracker, Notion portfolio, and book reading tracker.

Building professional relationships have opened doors to many opportunities and helped me grow as an entrepreneur. Today, I will share my process of creating a CRM in Notion; and how you can use this tool to stay on top of important relationships.

1. Starting point 💡

One of my career goals is to improve professional relationship building and establish meaningful conversations. Therefore, I have developed the habit of intentional networking. My goal is to:

Discover thoughtful people and brilliant minds who operate in product/tech
Create high-quality conversation via email, DM, or call
Develop long-term friendships rather than pursuing the number of “network”
Express gratitude to people who have supported my journey

In this Notion CRM, I want to accomplish these activities:

Keep track of my connection
Take conversation notes
Schedule time to re-connect
Make an introduction if they are looking for cofounders, new hires, freelancers, or investors.

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2. Create a CRM database ✍️

In an empty Notion page, create a contact database by adding a Table. Identify parameters you want to track for your networking activities. Here are some examples in my setup:

Full name
Profile photo
Email address
Social profile (LinkedIn, Twitter, Website URL)
Background (founder, engineer, product, growth)
Association (friend, acquaintance, co-worker, client)
Rating scale
Contact date (First contact, Last contact, and Next contact date)
Conversation notes
Areas I can provide help
Status (Reconnected, To reconnect, To reach out)

Some of my Notion clients also requested to include things like: ✅ a to-do list template for each contact, 🎁 a thank-you note reminder, multiple contact list views/layouts based on different connection types, etc.

3. Style the contact list 🎨

Using Gallery view in Notion is a great way to visualize your contact list in the form of a “card” display. You can create a separate “card” view that is based on the same contact database created in Step 2.

Each view has its own purpose. For example, I prefer using Table view (see Step 2) to record, tidy up, manage, and update my contact list; Gallery view to highlight important info or reminder about that person:

To display a summary of a person, I have configured the Gallery view to include these details:

Profile photo
Name of the person
Association
Email address
Areas they are looking for help

4. Manage connection activity 📆

One way to build professional relationships is to nurture existing networks and curate new connections. Therefore, I create a separate “Activity” view to log the status of the connection:

To reconnect (to touch base after last contact date)
Reconnected (recently reconnected)
To reach out (haven’t connected)
First-time contact (new connection is made)

Set a reminder to connect

You can also set a Date/Time reminder using Notion. Add a Date selector in the CRM tracker and set up the time accordingly:

Once I set up the reminder, Notion will prompt the notification and I will be able to see it from the left panel:

5. Take conversation notes 📙

I often jot down notes during the conversation whenever someone mentioned a helpful tool, a case study, a resource link, or things I learned about a person.

I also take notes on areas they are looking for help — followed by an action item I can do for that person. For example:

Hiring a full-time Golang developer (refer someone I know)
Looking for cofounders (make an intro between X and Y)
Jane is an avid reader (share my book notes)

6. Notion tips and tricks 🤩

As a Notion hacker, I love using the Notion formula, filter, sort, and display settings to optimize my CRM workflow and speed up my productivity.

Helpful Notion tricks I use to organize my CRM tracker:

As your contact list expands, organize the person’s name in ascending/descending order to easily find them
Organize the “Last Contact Date” in ascending order to surface older contacts or people you need to reconnect
Use ❤️ or ⭐️ emoji to indicate important people in your life or people who have supported you throughout your career
Create a Calendar view to visualize your networking activities by month
Use Notion formulas to calculate the year of the meeting and identify the number of connections made in X year

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