CRM Workflows

The individual pages explain each screen. This page explains how they fit together — the four journeys your team actually runs.

Workflow	Starts at	Ends at
Capture to customer	A new lead	A customer ready to be sold to
Working an account	A target company	Several deals under one prospect
Web lead to first contact	A form submission	A qualified lead
Losing a deal cleanly	A stalling deal	A recorded, analysable loss

1. Capture to customer

The main path. Every record along it is linked to the one before, so you can always trace an invoice back to the lead it began as.

Capture the lead

Create the lead — or let a form or CSV import create it. A linked contact is created at the same time.

Set Lead Source, Territory, and Lead Owner now. Filling them in later almost never happens.

Make contact and record it

Reach out, then Mark as Contacted and log the call or email in Communication with the correct direction.

If they are not ready, set a Next Follow Up date — the lead moves to Follow Up and is chased for that date.

Qualify

When there is a real need, a budget, and the right person, use Mark as Qualified.

Qualified is a gate, not a formality. Convert to Opportunity is only available from Qualified. Do not mark leads qualified just to unlock the button; it distorts your conversion rate and your forecast.

Generate the opportunity

Convert to Opportunity creates the deal and moves the lead to the Opportunity status. Territory, market segment, currency, and contact details carry across.

Set the Opportunity Amount, Probability, and Expected Closing, and add line items if you know what is being quoted.

Work the stages

Move the Sales Stage as the deal progresses. The status follows automatically, and each move is recorded — which is what makes sales-cycle reporting possible.

Close it

Mark as Won or Mark as Lost. A lost deal needs a Lost Reason and, where relevant, Competitors.

Convert to customer

Winning does not create the customer. Use Convert to Customer — from the lead, or from the opportunity if it is linked to one.

The lead becomes Converted, the customer is linked back to it, and the lead’s contacts are converted too.

Conversion is idempotent. Converting a lead that already has a customer returns the existing one — it never creates a second customer.

Sell

Raise a Sales Quotation or a Sales Order against the new customer.

What changes at each step

Step	Lead status	Opportunity status	Also happens
Create lead	Open	—	Contact created
Mark as Contacted	Contacted	—	—
Set follow-up date	Follow Up	—	Reminders re-armed
Mark as Qualified	Qualified	—	Conversion unlocked
Convert to Opportunity	Opportunity	Open	Opportunity linked to the lead
Mark as Won	Opportunity	Won	Stage moves to closed-won
Convert to Customer	Converted	Won	Customer created and linked; contacts converted

2. Working an account

Use this when a company has more than one conversation running.

Create the prospect

Record the company: name, industry, territory, customer group, size, and revenue. See Prospects.

Attach the people and the deals

On the Leads and Opportunities tabs, attach what already exists at that company. The prospect now shows the true total account value.

Work the leads and deals normally

Attaching does not change how they behave — they keep their own lifecycles. The prospect is a view, not a controller.

Convert

Creating a customer from the prospect marks it Converted and links the two.

A prospect does not turn into a lead, and a lead does not need a prospect. Use prospects when the account view is worth maintaining; skip them for one-contact opportunities.

3. Web lead to first contact

Build the form once

Add the fields, map them to lead fields, and set Default Lead Source, Default Status, and Auto-assign Owner. See Forms.

Copy the shareable link, or embed the script tag on your website.

Let leads arrive

Genuine submissions create leads automatically. Spam, duplicates, and honeypot hits are recorded but create nothing.

Enrich what the form could not capture

Territory, industry, and lead type cannot be set from a public form. Fill them in on first contact — they are what your reports slice by.

A form without an Auto-assign Owner produces unowned leads, and unowned leads are the ones that sit untouched. Set it on every form.

4. Losing a deal cleanly

A lost deal is still worth something — if you record why.

Mark the opportunity lost

Use Mark as Lost and select a Lost Reason from the Lost Reasons master. Add Competitors if you know who won.

Note the context

Log a note with what you learned — the objection you could not answer, the specification you could not meet.

Decide about the lead

The lead can stay active if there may be another deal later, or be marked Lost if the relationship is over. A lost lead can always be reopened.

Review the pattern

Read lost reasons together in the Sales Pipeline report and the Sales Funnel.

Reopening a lost opportunity clears its lost reason and competitors. If a deal comes back to life and you need that history, write it into a note first.

Rules worth remembering

Rule	Why it matters
A lead must be Qualified before it can become an opportunity	Keeps the pipeline honest
A lead becomes Converted only by creating a customer	Converted means revenue, not activity
Converted leads are frozen — no edits, no status changes, no deletion	The record of what was sold must not shift
Closed opportunities are terminal	Prefer Won or Lost, which stay analysable
Email addresses are globally unique across leads, prospects, and contacts	One person, one record
Campaigns can only be edited in Draft	A send in flight cannot change under itself
Deleting a lead deletes its linked contact	The two are one record in practice

Leads · Opportunities · Prospects
Forms — automated capture
Communication — recording what was said
Reports — measuring the workflows above
Sales — what happens after conversion