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: Give each stage a status and a win probability
Every stage carries a status: Open, Closed Won or Closed Lost. A pipeline has exactly one Closed Won stage and one Closed Lost stage, and as many Open stages as you need. Setting one of the closed statuses on a stage moves it off whichever stage holds it now, so you can never end up with two winning stages by accident.
Each Open stage also has a win probability: how likely a deal is to close once it reaches that point. Set it once in the stage manager and every deal that moves into the stage picks it up automatically, so nobody has to retype a percentage on every move. If you do type a figure on a specific deal, it stays until that deal next changes stage.
Closed Won is always 100% and Closed Lost is always 0%, so neither can be edited. A new pipeline starts with an even spread across its open stages, which you can then tune to match your own conversion rates.
The same row also sets stall days: how long a deal can sit in that stage before the board flags it as going cold. Give a fast stage like Negotiation a shorter figure than an early one.
Step 4: 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 5: 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 6: 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.
Working a lead before it becomes a deal
A lead is someone you are still chasing, before there is a deal worth putting on the board. Open any lead and you can now record that chase properly:
- Log an activity: a call, an email, a meeting, a site visit. Each one is stamped with who did it and when, so the history lives on the lead rather than in someone's head.
- Set a follow-up: "call back Thursday" becomes a reminder against the lead, rather than a note you hope to reread.
- Add dated notes: a running timeline of what was said, each entry keeping its author and date.
- Add the people: a lead is usually a company, and you rarely deal with only one person there. Add everyone you speak to, with their job title, email and phone, and mark one as the primary contact.
Because a lead is normally a company, the lead is titled by the company name where you have given one, with the main person shown underneath. The people you add sit in Contacts on the lead, so the buyer, whoever runs the projects and the person in accounts all live on the record rather than in the notes.
Leads carry a status rather than stages, because a lead has one dimension: how far through qualification it is. Stages belong to deals, which describe a sale you are already running. Open Statuses on the Leads page to rename them to your own language, recolour and reorder them, add your own, and choose which one a new lead starts in. Renaming a status never loses the leads sitting in it. There is also a Nurturing status for someone real but not ready yet, and a board view that groups leads by status so you can drag one along as it progresses.
Leads also chase you rather than the other way round. Each status has a quiet after setting: the number of days a lead can sit untouched before it is flagged as going quiet. A lead with a follow-up booked is never flagged, because it is parked on purpose. The leads list shows when each lead was last touched or is next due, and Needs attention filters to just the ones due a follow-up today or gone quiet with nothing planned. That is your daily worklist.
When the lead is worth pursuing, Convert to deal creates the account and the deal in one step, and the lead keeps its history. Everyone you added to the lead moves across to the new account, so nothing you recorded while chasing it is lost.
Reading the board
The board opens on the stages you can still do something about. Closed Won and Closed Lost fold away behind Show closed, so a large lost figure no longer sits at the top of the screen at the same size as your live pipeline.
The header carries three figures: open pipeline, the straight total, weighted, every deal at its chance of being won, and won. Weighted is the one to forecast from. The chance comes from the deal if it has one and from its stage otherwise, so moving a deal along updates it without anyone retyping.
If any open deal has no value, the header says how many, because a pipeline total that quietly ignores them reads higher than it is. Achievements now sit behind Show achievements rather than above the board.
The leads board and the deal board are the same board underneath, so dragging, columns and empty states behave the same on both.
Who can use the CRM
Everyone in your company can open the CRM and work leads, deals and contacts as soon as the CRM is switched on for you. There is nothing to grant for ordinary use.
A CRM role is only needed for the sharp edges: importing and exporting, deleting a contact under GDPR, and handing out access itself. Open CRM Access in the CRM menu to set one. CRM admin can do everything including the above, Sales manager sees and works the whole team's pipeline, Sales rep works their own, and Viewer reads without changing. Most people can be left with no role at all.
Company owners and admins can always change CRM access, so a company can never end up locked out of granting it.
These roles are enforced on the server, not just hidden in the screen, so a Viewer cannot change anything through the CRM however they reach it.
Deleting is limited to managers and admins. Someone with no CRM role can create and edit leads, deals, contacts and their activities as before, but deleting them now needs Sales manager, CRM admin, or a company owner or admin. Deleted leads go to the Recycle Bin rather than disappearing, and only an admin can empty it permanently.
Deleting several leads at once asks you to confirm, tells you what goes with them, and for ten or more asks you to type DELETE first. It is the one action on the list that cannot be undone by clicking again.
Emailing a lead from the CRM
You can send an email to a lead or contact from their record, and it is logged on their timeline like any other activity, so the history stays honest.
Before anything can be sent, an administrator adds your own sending domain under CRM settings and adds the DNS records it shows. Your email then comes from your address, on your own sending reputation, rather than a shared one. Until that domain verifies, the Send button explains why it is unavailable.
Templates save the emails you send often. Use {{firstName}}, {{company}} and the others listed in the editor to personalise them. If a record has no value for a variable you used, the send is blocked and tells you which one, rather than emailing somebody a message addressed to {{firstName}}.
Every email carries an unsubscribe link. If somebody uses it, or an address bounces or reports a message as spam, that address goes on your Do not email list and is never contacted again. The list is kept even if the lead or contact is later deleted, so an erased record cannot quietly bring somebody back into your sending.
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.
- A forecast that keeps itself current, because moving a deal updates its probability without anyone being asked.
- 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.