Leads and the Pipeline

A lead is somebody who has asked about the work and has not bought it yet. They are kept apart from your clients on purpose: a lead becomes a client only when you convert them, so your client list stays a list of people you actually work for.

The Growth Hub

Growth opens with four figures — Open, Not contacted, Due now and Won this month — and two sections: Pipeline (Leads, New Lead) and Capture (Forms, Submissions — see Capture Forms). An amber to check badge on Submissions means the website form turned something away that nobody has looked at yet.

Logging a Lead

Click New Lead and fill in what you have:

• First name, Last name, Company name (leave blank for a private individual)
• Email or Phone — at least one is required, or there is no way to answer them
• What are they asking about? — in their words. Contact details and interest only; no medical or other sensitive information
• Source — Added manually, Website form, Phone call, Walk-in, Referral or Imported
• Stage, Estimated value, Owner and a Next action date
• They agreed to receive marketing — tick only if they actually said yes. Confirmations and replies do not need it; it is recorded with the moment it was given

Working the Pipeline

Leads shows either a Pipeline board or a List. The board has one column per stage; a new company starts with New → Contacted → Booked → Attended → Quoted → Won → Lost.

Cards move through the menu, not by dragging: Move to → stage. The same menu offers Log contact (stamps when you last spoke to them), Convert to client and Mark lost. Filters on the list: Open, Not contacted, Due now, Converted, Lost, plus owner, source and a search across name, email, phone and enquiry.

The lead page shows everything on the Overview tab and every change on the Timeline — who did what and when, automatically. Free-text notes go in the enquiry field.

Converting, Losing, Reopening

Convert to client creates the client record with the name, company, email and phone, moves the lead to Won and opens the client. A converted lead shows Already a client with an Open client button; clicking convert twice cannot make two clients. Conversion does not raise an estimate — quote from the client record as usual.

Mark lost asks for a reason (went elsewhere, price, no answer…) and takes the lead out of the open pipeline while keeping the record. Reopen puts it back.