CRM: leads and pipeline
Every enquiry from first contact to won or lost. The CRM has three tabs. Pipeline is a board of live leads by stage (enquiry, site visit, estimating, quote submitted, negotiation, won), with the leads due a follow-up today across the top and the lost and on-hold ones in a footer. Leads is the full list for finding things, including the closed ones. Analytics is what the pipeline says about how you sell. The strip above all three shows live leads, the 90-day win rate, follow-ups today, won this year and the average deal. Owners and estimators use it; anyone can read it.
Companies and people are not here any more. Every business and person lives in Contacts; the old Companies and Contacts tabs take you there.
- A lead needs a title. A company, a value and a follow-up date are optional, but a lead with no follow-up date never appears on the follow-up rail.
- A client company comes from Contacts. The new-lead form searches it and can add one.
- Press New lead. The form has six pages: job details, financials, contacts, follow-up, files and send intake. Only the title is required.
- Pick the company from Contacts, the project type and the source, and type the site. Add the contract value estimate (ex GST) and an estimated margin if you know them.
- Add the people on the client side, set a Follow-up date and type, and attach any files.
- Send Intake offers to email the client a link to a form that fills in the brief for you. Give it their email, or skip it.
- Press Create lead. It lands in the pipeline at Enquiry.
A quicker way is to describe the enquiry in chat; the assistant creates the lead, the company and the contact together.
- Start with the follow-up rail. Leads due today sit at the top.
- Drag a card to the next column as the deal moves, or open it and press Move forward. The stage is what the analytics are computed from, so a stale board makes the analytics wrong.
- Open a card for its drawer: Activity, Quotes, Contacts, Follow-ups, Emails, Documents and Details. Details opens with the assistant's deal summary (where it stands, the risks, the next move), the owner and the expected close date that drives the forecast.
- Follow-ups are tasks with a title, notes and a date; tick one off when it is done.
- Open the lead and press Mark lost.
- Pick the lost reason and add a note ("lost on price by about 6%"). The lost-reason breakdown in Analytics is only as good as what gets typed here.
- When the client accepts the quote, the lead's project bar reads "Estimate accepted. Create the project from this quote?"
- Press Create project to make the job from the lead (number, name, site, contract sum ex GST; the client company carries across), or Link existing to attach the lead to a job you already set up.
- Open project then takes you to the job. The lead keeps its link, so the quote trail and the job stay together.
- On Leads, press Enquiry links.
- Name where the link will live ("Website") and create it. Copy the link, or show its QR code for site hoarding.
- Each submission arrives as a lead with the contact, the company and the full message as the opening note. Switch a link off here when you stop using it.
- Open Analytics: value by stage, win and loss by project type and by source, the conversion funnel, lost reasons, quotes and wins by month, and time in stage.
- Ask the assistant for the forecast ("what is landing this quarter?") to get the probability-weighted pipeline by expected close month, with the leads that have no close date listed separately.
- The hot, warm, cool or cold chip on a card is an evidence score: source quality, fit against jobs you have actually won, whether the quote was opened, how recently they replied. Hover it to see every point.
- A lead's drawer can suggest the next stage from what has happened; accept or dismiss the suggestion.
- Accepting a quote on the portal or by signature marks the linked lead won and the linked job won. See Client and the quote.
- Marking a lead won does not create the project. Press Create project when you are ready.
- The score chip and your probability slider are separate on purpose: the chip is what the evidence says, the slider is what you believe. When they disagree, that is the information.
- Every chart in Analytics is computed from lead stages and lost reasons. If the board is not kept current, the page is confidently wrong.
- A lead with no expected close date sits in an "unscheduled" bucket in the forecast rather than a month.