Work you have not won yet still needs somewhere to live. The CRM gives you a board of the deals you are chasing, arranged in the stages your sales actually go through, so you can see what is close and what has gone quiet. This is a how-to: follow the steps below to set up a pipeline, name its stages to match the way you sell, and move deals across it.
Before you start
The CRM is a module, so it needs to be switched on for your company. If you do not see CRM in the sidebar, ask your administrator to enable it. Renaming, adding and removing stages is limited to administrators, so everyone else sees the board without the management controls.
Step 1: Open the board
The CRM opens on your pipeline board. Each column is a stage, each card is a deal, and the column heading shows how many deals sit there and what they are worth. Drag a card from one column to the next to move a deal along. Above the board you get the open value, a leaderboard, and a streak counter, so the board doubles as a daily prompt to keep things moving.
Step 2: Rename the stages to match how you sell
A new pipeline starts with a sensible default set of stages, but the names are unlikely to be yours. Click Stages next to the pipeline switcher at the top of the board to open the stage manager. From there you can:
- Rename a stage by clicking its name, typing, and clicking away. The change saves immediately and the board column heading updates with it.
- Recolour a stage using the colour swatch, which sets the colour of its column heading on the board.
- Reorder your stages by dragging a row up or down by its handle, or using the up and down arrows if you prefer the keyboard. The board columns follow the order you set.
- Add a stage with the Add stage button. It is appended after your existing stages, so reorder it into place afterwards.
- Delete a stage with the bin icon, then confirm. A stage that still has deals in it cannot be deleted: move those deals to another stage first.
Step 3: Run more than one pipeline
One board rarely fits every kind of sale. New business, renewals and tenders often move through completely different steps, and forcing them into shared stages makes the board harder to read. You can keep a separate pipeline for each, with its own stages.
Click Pipelines next to the switcher to manage them. From there you can rename a pipeline, add one, set which pipeline is the default, and delete one you no longer need. A new pipeline arrives pre-seeded with a starting set of stages, so you can rename those rather than build a board from nothing. Use the drop-down next to the buttons to switch the board between pipelines.
Two rules protect your data. You always keep at least one pipeline, so the last one cannot be deleted. A pipeline that still holds deals cannot be deleted either: move or remove those deals first. If you delete the pipeline that was the default, another is promoted automatically.
Step 4: Set the default pipeline
The default pipeline is the one the board opens on and the one preselected when you create a deal. Set it to whichever board your team lives in day to day. In the Pipelines manager, click Make default on the pipeline you want, and the badge moves across. Only one pipeline is the default at a time.
Step 5: Add a deal to the right pipeline
Create a deal from the Deals list with New deal. Choose the pipeline first, then the stage within it, because the stage list depends on which pipeline you picked. You can also link the deal to an account, set its value and set an expected close date. Linking a deal to an account is what ties your pipeline back to the customer record, so do it while you remember.
What this gives you
- A board in your language, because stage names are yours rather than ours.
- One board per kind of sale, so renewals do not clutter the view of new business.
- Fewer mis-filed deals, because creating a deal makes you pick the pipeline and stage up front.
- Safe edits, because a stage or pipeline that still holds deals cannot be deleted out from under them.
Where to go next
- Getting started with Loaditude covers setting up the rest of your operation.
- Quotes and rate cards covers pricing the work once a deal is won.