Pipedrive is a sales customer relationships management (CRM) tool enabling sales teams to make more sales while doing less work. One of the most appealing features of using a CRM is organizing information and processes to keep sales teams from missing out on communications and potential sales.
One way Pipedrive helps do this is by allowing you to designate potential customers as “deals” or “leads.”
This article will define Pipedrive deals and leads, when to use them, and how to convert leads into deals.
Pipedrive leads are potential deals. A lead could be a contact that you haven’t communicated or worked with before. For example, someone may have visited your website and signed up for a newsletter.
Leads can also be those that stall out or are not ready to move forward just yet. Maybe they need approval from their board of directors or supervisors, or they’re waiting for the next fiscal year.
You have other sales opportunities that are hotter: they’re closer to making a buying decision or have engaged with you multiple times. These are deals, et, you don’t want to miss an opportunity with leads. Leads occupy a distinct spot in Pipedrive, so your team can be aware of them, nurture them, and, hopefully, get them into the deal pipeline.
You can enter leads manually into Pipedrive one at a time, by importing a CSV file of many at a time, or by connecting Pipedrive to a lead form, such as a Contact page on your website.
Identifying leads and deals helps to keep the deals workspace more manageable.
You can organize your leads in the Pipedrive leads inbox. The leads inbox is separate from the deal pipelines one to avoid confusion and clutter. Pipedrive lead management allows you to classify leads as hot, warm, or cold.
One key difference between leads and deals: Leads cannot move along a sales pipeline. They need to be converted to deals before they can enter a pipeline.
Conversely, if a deal stalls out without being lost, it can be returned to lead status so your team can attend to other potential customers.
It is important to note that you do not have to use the leads inbox. If most of the leads you receive are already a warm sales opportunity, then it makes the most sense for you to create these opportunities as deals directly. However, maybe you sell multiple products with unique sales funnels. When a person completes your webform you can automatically have a lead created, but you don’t yet know which Pipeline should house the deal. This is a great time to use the leads Inbox while you figure out in which Pipeline to house the deal. There are different use cases for leads and deals in Pipedrive, and this is something you will want to carefully consider when designing your sales map.
Pipedrive Deals are qualified sales opportunities. They are used to track the progress of your sales teams’ ongoing interactions with a person or organization as a deal moves through the stages of your pipeline.
The ultimate goal is to get a Won Deal which is a deal that has moved through the stages of your Pipeline and the customer ultimately decided to buy your product or service. At that point the deal status will be changed from open (which is the default) to Won. Sometimes, as we all know, things fall through, and the deal may also be marked as lost. But a Lost Deal isn’t always a bad thing. By customizing your lost reasons you can measure the volume of deals lost for various reasons like “No response,” “Price too high,” or “Delivery time too long.” And tracking these reasons can help you make better business decisions down the line.
A deal should be created in Pipedrive when the sales opportunity is pre-qualified in some way. This can mean you’ve communicated with them and they’ve shown some interest in your product or services. The sales pipeline consists of all your high-value, sales-ready deals.
Initially, a deal is placed in a pipeline stage and can be assigned a monetary value. Each deal has standard data fields, but you can also create customized deal detail fields to keep track of information specific to your product or service. Further, data fields enable individuals on your team to search deals based on the criteria they filter.
Deals contain all the Pipedrive activities–everything that occurs in the process of closing a deal. Pipedrive activities could include phone calls, emails, tasks, meetings, proposals, deadlines, etc. Activities can also be created and completed on Organizations and People, but deals are the sales opportunities you’re working to close, so activities are most often connected to deals.
As a deal progresses through the pipeline, more data gets recorded to monitor the relationship with the potential customer and determine any weak spots in your pipeline.
What if a contact isn’t ready to move forward? Or if your sales team hasn’t reached out to them yet?
If a sales opportunity is not moving through the pipeline, but also not a lost deal, it’s better to distinguish these opportunities as leads.
When the lead is ready to enter the sales pipeline, it can easily be converted into a deal.
Find the lead and then click Convert to Deal.
Now you can add information defining the new deal's pipeline, visibility, and value. Any information in the lead details will automatically populate the deal.
Also, Pipedrive deals can be converted into leads in your dashboard’s pipeline view, deal detail view, and deals list view.
Pipedrive is an excellent sales tool when you have it set up and working in a way that focuses your sales team and automates tasks that aren’t directly related to selling.
If you’re still trying to figure out how to set up and integrate Pipedrive–or someone set it up for you, and it’s a mess–contact us to set up a Pipedrive working session.
