Leads

Introduction to Leads

Leads are a great way of managing a lot of business opportunities where little or no contact has yet been made. Leads can be converted to companies when they become more important. (Companies can have multiple contacts and opportunities).

Leads are flexible in that the only required field is the Lead name. So you can add leads with minimal information, then add more information later. You can also add leads quickly from the mobile menu when out of the office – captured live into your system.

The essence of a Lead is captured by three fields:

  • Lead name
  • Status (Unknown, Cold, Warm or Hot)
  • Notes (some text)
  • Date of next action

A range of other information can be added to a Lead as it becomes available.

Important Note:

When you open the Leads List page, Leads are sorted with the oldest Next Action Date at the top and future Next Action Dates further down. It is envisaged that most users will start at the top and work down the page based on the Next Action Dates.

If you work with many Leads, they will need to be classified in order to group them for different campaigns.

Lead Types and Industries can be configured by System Administrators in Settings and provide effective ways of grouping leads.

The Status field is a way of grouping, with Warm and Hot status being the Leads of greatest interest.

Tags are an additional, flexible way of grouping Leads. Note that when you start typing a Tag, a list of similar Tags will display that you can select. Press Enter to add a new Tag after typing its name. (Note, you don’t need to Click the Save button to save the Tags).

Click the blue Tags administration button at the top of the Leads list page to manage your tags, including adding, deleting and renaming:

Tags

Leads can also be assigned to different sales people.

Converting Leads to Companies

Leads can be converted to Companies.

A Company is a generic term for an Account, which can be a person, company or any other entity. The difference between a Company and a Lead is that a company can have multiple:

  • Notes
  • Contacts (each with their own notes)
  • Actions
  • Documents and;
  • Opportunities (each of which can have their own Notes, Documents and Actions).

There is no fixed model for how businesses should use Leads and Companies. Most businesses will use Leads to manage opportunities where no contact has been made, or where significant interest has not been established. Leads are converted to Companies when interest has been established, and when there is a need to manage multiple contacts and opportunities with a single company (or other entity), or when more information about the potential of the entity is available.

It is important for any team to establish guidelines for the use of Leads and Companies. See below for more information on converting Leads to Companies.

Getting started with Leads

Add a lead

Open the CRM module, CRMTray, then click Leads in the Menu Panel to display the Leads page.

Leads page - Presents the list of leads. Can be filtered and exported to spreadsheet.

On the Leads page, Click Add New Lead button– top right to open a page for adding a new Lead.

Add New Lead page. The Lead name is mandatory. All other fields are optional.

The Lead Name is mandatory, but all other fields are optional, making the Leads tool an easy way to manage lists of Leads where minimal information is available.

The Lead name can be a company name, person name or combined name. When a Lead is converted to a Company, the Lead Name becomes the Company name.

The Lead name must be unique (no other lead can have the same name). If you wish to create multiple leads for the same company, consider adding contact name to the lead name to make it unique. E.g. ABC Company – John Smith, ABC Company – Jane Reilly.

To imports leads from an Excel spreadsheet, click the Import Leads button on the Add Lead page. (See Importing Leads below).

Editing Leads

From the Menu Panel, click Leads.

There are two ways to edit a Lead.

  1. The Edit button on the left end of the table row opens a popup form for adding Notes or changing the Status or Next Action date.
  2. Click the Lead name to open a page where all of the Leads information is available for editing.

Editing a lead using the Quick Editing pop-up.

Using Tags

Tags are a flexible way to organize your leads into groups or categories.

To add a tag, click on the Tags field and start typing a tag name. As you type a list of existing tags is displayed. You can select an existing tag. If you type a unique Tag name the Tag will be added.

Tags are added dynamically as you enter them. You don’t need to click the Save button to save change to the Tags. If you Type the name of an Tag that is already associated with the Lead, the existing Tag will blink, and an additional (duplicate) Tag will not be added.

To manage your Tags, click the Tag icon at the top of the Lead List page. You can view the current Tags including how many Leads use each Tag. You may only delete a Tag if it is not associated with any leads. However, you may rename Tags at any time.

Converting a Lead to a Company

You may wish to convert a Lead to a Company when it become more important. Once you convert to a company, you can add multiple contacts. You can also add opportunities to a company, which are included in your forecast.

To convert a Lead to a Company, open the lead by clicking the lead name on the Leads page.

Click the orange Convert button at the top. When the button is clicked, a search is done for companies with a name that is similar or identical to the Lead Name. If one is found you are given the option of adding the Lead Contact and Notes to an existing company.

If you select an existing company, the Lead Contact will be added to the Company, and the Notes will be added to Company Notes. Leads Tags are appended to the Company Tags.

If an identical company name is found that you don’t wish to use, close the form then rename the Lead. Click the Convert button again to convert the lead.

If converting a lead creates a new Company:

  • The Lead Name becomes the Company name.
  • Address and web details are copied to the corresponding Company fields.
  • The Lead Type becomes the Company Type.
  • The Lead notes are added to the Company Notes.
  • The Lead Contact person is added as a Company Contact.

The Lead/Company Types and Lead/Company tags use the same pick lists so that Type and Tags details are copied from Lead to Company and there is consistency between the classification of Leads and Companies during conversion.

Searching and filtering Leads

The Leads List page includes a variety of ways of searching and filtering leads. Any filtered list of Leads can be exported to an Excel Spreadsheet at any time by clicking the green Export Excel button – top right of page.

Tips for filtering leads

  • Click the list of Alphabet letters to quickly list the Leads whose name starts with the letter. (Click the All button at the right hand end to display all leads after selecting a letter).
  • Start typing into the Search Leads field at the top of the page to open a Lead based on the Lead or Contact Name.
  • Use any combination of filters in the filter panel.
    Click Clear Filters to clear the filter panel.
    You can view inactive leads by clicking the Inactive checkbox on the Filter Panel.

Exporting Leads

Leads can be exported to an Excel Spreadsheet at any time by clicking the green Export Excel button – top right of page. The resulting spreadsheet will include the details required for importing your leads into an emailing system such as Mail Chimp.

To export all of the fields associated with your leads, use the Export tools in the Settings options (available to System Administrators), where all of your CRM data can be exported.

Importing Leads

See the Import CRM Data user guide for importing Leads into PeopleTray.

Lead Settings

The list of Lead Sources (e.g. Phone-in, Printed advertising, Internet, Referrals), can be configured in Settings by System Administrators.

Next – Guide to companies and contacts

CRMTray guide