A lead is an enquiry that has not become a customer yet. It carries where it came from, who owns it, what it might be worth and what has been said so far.
Adding one by hand
- Go to Sales → Leads and choose New.
- Enter the name. Everything else is optional, so a lead taken on the phone can be saved in five seconds and filled in later.
- Set the source — this is the field that later tells you which spend produced revenue, so it is worth filling in even when you are in a hurry.
- Set the stage, or leave it at the first one.
- Set the owner. It defaults to you.
- Save.
Adding several at once
Use Import CSV — see Import your existing data.
Moving it along
- Switch to the Kanban view.
- Drag the card into the next stage. Drop it between two cards to set its position, and it stays there.
- Use Group by to see the same leads arranged by owner, source or any dropdown field instead.
- Set as default view makes that arrangement yours, without changing anybody else’s.
Recording what happened
Open the lead and use the Activity tab.
- Add note — anything worth remembering.
- Log call — inbound or outbound, the date and time, how long it lasted, the outcome and what was discussed.
- Send email — from your own address, with cc and bcc, attachments, a template, and a send time if you want it to go later.
The History tab is separate from Activity. Activity is what you did; History is what changed — which field, from what to what, by whom and when.
Converting it
When a lead becomes real, convert it to a customer and optionally a deal. The lead stays as the record of where the customer came from, which is what makes source-level conversion reporting possible later.
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us — a question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.