"I meant to follow up." Every service business owner has said this about a lead they wanted. The lead slipped behind whatever was loud that week. The owner feels bad, promises to do better, and repeats the same cycle next month.
Follow-up keeps slipping because it depends on one person remembering at the right moment. When the week gets busy, the newest fire wins and the quiet prospect disappears behind it.
Give every quiet prospect a person and a reminder
"Whoever's free handles it" sounds like a plan. In practice it means most of the time nobody does, because everybody assumes someone else has it, or everybody is equally busy at the exact moment it needed to happen. A lead that goes quiet after the first message needs someone to notice the silence and act on it. Without a system, noticing is optional and usually loses to whatever is already on fire.
What consistent follow-up looks like
A real follow-up system uses a small number of scheduled touches: a next-day check-in, another a few days later, and one more roughly a week or two out. A response stops the sequence. Silence keeps it moving until the planned final message.
Follow up often enough that a deal never dies because nobody responded.
Write the sequence before you buy the CRM
A CRM can hold the sequence, but somebody still has to decide what the messages say, when they go out, who steps in, and when follow-up ends. Write that process first. Then use software to make it run consistently.
What to build first
Start with the lead type you receive most often. Build one sequence with three spaced-out touches and run it for a month before adding a second. A short sequence that runs every time will do more than five elaborate drafts nobody uses.