Prospects and the sales pipeline

Customers and prospects

A prospect is a customer record that is not a customer yet. It has everything a customer has (contacts, tickets, boards, notes) plus a few pipeline fields:

Field	Meaning
Stage	Where the prospect is in your pipeline.
Owner	The team member working the opportunity.
Expected value	What the deal is worth, in dollars.
Expected close	When you expect it to sign. Shown in red once it has passed.
Source	Where the lead came from: Inbound email, Website form, Referral, Partner, Event / conference, Existing customer and so on.

On the Customers page, prospects carry a blue Prospect pill in the Type column; customers carry a green Customer pill. Choose Prospects in the toolbar to see only prospects, with the Stage, Owner, Expected value and Expected close columns.

Stages

Every workspace starts with four stages, Lead, Qualified, Proposal and Negotiation, plus Lost, which is always there and always last. There is no Won stage: a prospect wins by being converted to a customer.

To change the stages:

1. On CRM → Customers, choose Prospects and click Stages. The Pipeline stages dialog opens.
2. Edit a stage's name, pick its colour from the swatch, or use the arrows to move it up or down. Add stage adds a new row; the bin icon removes one. You can have up to 20 stages.
3. If you removed a stage that still has prospects in it, choose where they should go under Prospects in removed stages will move to… (the first stage by default).
4. Click Save stages.

Table or board

In the Prospects scope the toolbar offers two layouts:

• Table is the normal list. Sort by Stage to see the pipeline in order, or pick the built-in Prospect pipeline view.
• Board shows one column per stage, with a card for each prospect. The column header shows the count and the total expected value in that stage. Each card shows the company, its email, the owner's avatar, the expected value, the expected close date and how many days the prospect has sat in its current stage.

On the board only the Owner filter and Mine apply; search and the other filters are for the table.

Move a prospect to another stage

• On the board, drag the card to another column.
• In the table, click the Stage pill and pick the new stage. The current stage has a check mark.
• On the prospect's page, use the Stage field in the pipeline strip above the tabs.

Mark a prospect as lost, and reopen it

1. Pick Mark as lost… at the bottom of the Stage picker, drag the card onto the Lost column, or click Mark as lost on the prospect's page.
2. In the Mark "name" as lost dialog, type a Reason if you have one (Went with a competitor, No budget, Timing) and click Mark as lost.

A lost prospect stays a prospect but is hidden from the table and the board. Turn on the Lost toggle in the toolbar to see lost prospects; on the board they appear in a Lost column with the reason on each card. To bring one back, open its Stage picker, which now reads Reopen in stage, and pick a stage, or click Reopen on its page.

Owner, value, close date and source

• Change the Owner by clicking the owner pill in the table or on the card. Picking yourself or a teammate never sends an email.
• Change Expected value, Expected close and Source in the pipeline strip on the prospect's page or on its Edit page. In the table, turn on those columns with Columns to see them.

Convert a prospect to a customer

When the prospect signs:

• Click the Prospect pill in the Type column and choose Convert to customer, or
• Open the prospect and choose Convert to customer in the pipeline strip or the Actions menu, or
• Tick several prospects and choose Convert to customer from the selection bar.

The record becomes a customer straight away, keeping its contacts, tickets and boards. A toast reads Converted name to a customer with an Undo link that works for 10 seconds. Bulk conversion asks you to confirm first.

A converted customer shows Converted in the Stage column and, on its page, Converted from prospect on date by name · closed from stage. Turn on the Converted column to sort customers by conversion date.

Turn a customer back into a prospect

Click the Customer pill and choose Mark as prospect, or use Mark as prospect in the Actions menu on the customer's page. BlueHill asks you to confirm, then moves the record back into the pipeline with its contacts, tickets and boards intact. Set its stage next.

The pipeline strip on a prospect's page

A prospect's page has a strip above the tabs with Stage (and how many days it has been there), Owner, Expected value, Expected close and Source, plus Mark as lost and Convert to customer buttons. A lost prospect shows Lost. with the reason and a Reopen button instead.

Who can see prospects

An administrator can hide prospects from particular teams under Prospect visibility on the Organization tab of Settings. Members of those teams see no Prospects scope, no Type or Stage columns and no convert options; they still see customers as usual.

Next: Work inside a customer record.