Leads and Enquiries
A lead is a customer account that is not billing yet. It looks and behaves like any other customer, holds pre-sale numbers, services and features, and can be converted into a live billing account when you win the work.
Creating a lead
Section titled “Creating a lead”Use New Lead from Sales Home or the Deals list.
What you need: the Sales and Base CRM sections for the dealer you are creating the lead under, and permission to add customers.
Steps:
- Choose New Lead. If more than one set of default values applies, pick which to use before the form opens.
- Fill in the company and contact details. The form is trimmed to what a lead needs, so billing fields you cannot answer yet are not in your way.
- Save.
You are taken straight to the new deal form for that lead, because raising a deal is nearly always the next step.
Things to know:
- A lead carries the Is Lead flag and a lead status such as Lead, Lead Won, Lead Lost or Lead Dropped.
- Leads, deals and pre-sale products are created in the CRM only. The billing backend no longer offers them: there is no Add Lead menu entry, no Pre-Sale submenu on the Add menu, and no Pre-Sale Number, Service or Feature options on the customer, number and service pages. The backend keeps the deal page for Bring Deal Live, which is a billing activity.
- New billing customers are still created in the backend, or by converting a lead when you win it.
- Statuses carry a Pre-Sale flag, labelled Is Lead on customer statuses, and the billing side describes these records in pre-sale language throughout.
Pre-sale products
Section titled “Pre-sale products”Pre-sale numbers, services and features hang off a deal rather than off the customer’s live base. They never bill, never rate calls and never appear on an invoice. They exist so you can build exactly what you are proposing, price it properly, and turn it into real records at Go Live.
Add them from the Deal products panel on the deal:
- Add number, Add service and Add standalone feature create records directly.
- Add feature on an existing row hangs a feature under that number or service.
- Add transaction records a one-off charge such as setup, hardware or delivery.
- Add package crystallises a whole package in one step.
- Add renewal of existing attaches a live record so the deal amends it rather than duplicating it.
Things to know:
- Products can only be added while the deal is open and editable. A deal frozen by an outstanding proposal refuses them until the customer answers or you withdraw it.
- A feature’s parent must be a pre-sale record on the same deal that has not gone live yet.
- Rows carry tags showing what they are: New, Renewal, Upgrade, Stock, Live and Ends at go-live.
The Enquiries inbox
Section titled “The Enquiries inbox”Email arriving at your sales addresses from somebody the platform does not recognise lands in Enquiries for triage, rather than raising a ticket.
What you need: the Sales section, permission to see enquiries, and the Cases & Email feature. Resolving an enquiry needs edit permission; creating a lead from one also needs permission to add customers and contacts.
Each enquiry shows when it arrived, who it came from, the subject, the message body and any attachments. A sender whose address could not be verified is tagged unverified sender.
Actions
Section titled “Actions”Associate
Section titled “Associate”Files the enquiry against an existing customer.
When to use: the message is from a customer you already have, under an address the platform did not recognise.
The page suggests matches for you, labelled (exact address) where the address is already on an account and (same domain) where the company domain matches. You can also type an account number.
What happens: the enquiry is marked associated, and a case is opened on that customer carrying the original message, so your reply lands on a thread.
Create lead
Section titled “Create lead”Turns the enquiry into a new lead.
Required: a company name or a surname. The form pre-fills the company from the sender’s domain and splits the display name into a first name and surname.
What happens: a lead account and a contact are created, and a case is opened carrying the message. The banner offers a link to open the new account.
Ignore and Spam
Section titled “Ignore and Spam”Clear the enquiry without creating anything. Both keep the message, so nothing is lost.
Things to know:
- New enquiries are listed oldest first, so nothing sits unanswered; every other view is newest first.
- The addresses that feed this inbox are set per dealer as Inbound Enquiry Addresses, one address or address fragment per line. The longest match wins.
- Mail from a recognised customer takes a different route: either a ticket, or a case where Inbound Mail Opens Cases is switched on for that dealer.
Field reference
Section titled “Field reference”The fields on an enquiry record:
Enquiry
Section titled “Enquiry”| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Received Email ID | Inbound email log record the enquiry arrived as |
| Dealer | |
| Sender | |
| Sender Name | |
| Sender Domain | |
| Sender Verified | Whether the message passed sender authentication (SPF/DKIM) checks |
| Subject | |
| Message | |
| HTML Message | |
| Received |
Resolution
Section titled “Resolution”| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Status | new, associated, lead-created, ignored or spam |
| Assigned To | |
| Customer | Customer the enquiry was associated with (or the lead created from it) |
| Case | |
| Deal | |
| Resolved By | |
| Resolved |
System Information
Section titled “System Information”| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Last Updated By |