Capture leads

Leads reach your workspace five ways: you type them in, you import a spreadsheet, your website's contact form submits them, your team turns live chat conversations into them, and event registrations generate them through rules. Out of the box, new records land straight in the pipeline as opportunities. Switch on the Leads feature when you want a qualification step before a record enters the pipeline.

Bring leads in

• By hand. Create a record from the pipeline (or the Leads list, once the Leads feature is on) and fill in the contact.
• From a spreadsheet. Import a CSV or XLSX file from the list view to load many records at once. Map your columns to fields and test with a few rows first.
• From your website's contact form. Each submission creates a record in CRM, marked as coming from your website. See Forms & lead capture.
• From live chat. During a conversation, an operator types /lead followed by a title to create a lead linked to that chat. See Connect CRM to your site, chat & phone.
• From event registrations. Lead generation rules in Events create leads from registrations, one per attendee or one per group.

Phone calls do not create leads. Once calling is set up, inbound and outbound calls log onto the matching lead's timeline instead — see Connect CRM to your site, chat & phone.

See where a lead came from

Every lead carries source, medium, and campaign fields. Website submissions arrive stamped as website leads, and a visitor who clicked through from an Email Marketing campaign brings that campaign with them. Group the pipeline or any report by source or campaign to see which channels produce deals.

Add a qualification step

By default there is no separate Leads list; new records go straight to the pipeline as opportunities. To qualify raw leads before they enter the pipeline:

1. Open Settings as an administrator.
2. In the CRM section, turn on Leads.
3. Save.

New inbound records can now arrive as leads first. Each sales team chooses whether its inbound records arrive as leads or go straight to the pipeline as opportunities.

Convert a lead to an opportunity

When a lead looks real, qualify it:

1. Open the lead from the Leads list.
2. Review the contact details and add what you learn.
3. Click Convert to Opportunity.
4. Confirm the sales team and salesperson.

The opportunity enters your pipeline at the first stage. From there you track expected revenue and a closing date and move it toward Won.

Assign leads to your team

Turn on Rule-Based Assignment in the CRM settings to distribute leads without hand-offs. Each team member gets an assignment rule (a filter on fields like country, expected revenue, or tags) and a lead capacity, the average number of leads they take over 30 days. Assignment runs on a repeating schedule or manually from the team, and each lead lands with the rep whose rule it matches, up to their capacity.

Work a lead

Schedule the next step so nothing goes cold: a call, an email, a meeting, or a to-do, each with an owner and a deadline. When you write on the lead, know the difference between the two message types: an internal note stays inside your team, while a message notifies the lead's followers. You can also text the contact from the record once Calls & SMS is set up.

Related

• CRM overview
• Manage your pipeline
• Connect CRM to your site, chat & phone