Trying to understand the purpose of leads vs deals
Hi all, I'm trying to understand the... purpose/point of a lead versus a deal from the context of, to me, a lead should be meant for people (and resulting communication) prior to a deal. You talk to the lead, back and forth, negotiate, etc and then you convert it to a deal. But by that point I would have only converted the lead to a deal if the lead told me they were ready to proceed - but if you went with that logic, there'd be no point in needing to mark a deal as lost?
I don't really like the thought of having every communication being considered a deal either as we used to do that but it became just as messy.
So I suppose my broader question is, how is everyone else using leads -> deal or leads vs deals?
Answers
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@alturic I have covered this topic in detail here and also provided my recommended approach:
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Hi @alturic - You are not alone in this question! :)
As a Pipedrive Partner, I most often recommend that clients use a “New Lead / New Deal” stage in their pipeline rather than the Leads inbox. I dive into the different use cases a bit more in this article - https://www.opsdesigned.com/articles/lead-vs-deal-pipedrive
It sounds like you want to use the Leads Inbox somewhat, but not all the way until contract negotiations (smart!). I in your case I might recommend something like, an opportunity remains in the Leads Inbox until you've confirmed there's someone on the other end of the line (e.g. a connected phone call or email response received). At that point, your sales reps should convert the lead to a deal and manage the back and forth and negotiations in the Sales Pipeline. That way "ghost" leads won't be clogging up your Pipeline, but you'll still be managing the majority of the sales process as Deals.
If you would like additional support, feel free to reach out.
- Liz
Schedule a Working Session | Pipedrive for Beginners | Pipedrive Integrations
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Hi there, we use LEADS INBOX extensively but its getting huge & we use label to claissfy if qualified leads etc. We used to have them all in deals, but 2 pipelines with leads & then triallers got very messy for reporting & moving deals from pipelines. Any recommondations here
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This is kind of what happened with us. I didn't like the thought of having all of these "deals" clogging up the pipeline and sitting them all in a "Lead In" type of stage, so we ended up trying exactly what you said - dumping them all into the Leads Inbox and using labels… which is ultimately the same thing. Granted we don't really use reports and such to where that is going to get ugly/inaccurate in terms of reporting but still.
So ultimately what I did is make two pipelines, one for leads and then one for deals. As silly as that is, the deals pipeline only has 2 stages - "DocuSign Sent" and "Account Setup" and that's because, to me, a lead is a lead until they are ready to commit at which point it is a deal. Perhaps our workflow is really simple or something but it still feels… weird.
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Thanks for that. Good to hear how you do it. What do you do when one of the LEADS in your lead pipeline is ready to be converted into a deal? Do you WIN it & then recreate another deal in DEAL pipeline, or do you just move it to the DEAL pipeline. We like to look at conversion rate of deals to won, and this mucks it moving pipelines.
Any further suggestions/ideas here would be great. Thankyou0 -
And then the next question is you have LEADS in a pipeline, and then that LEAD is lost as not interested, but then they come back later & are keen again as lead, what do you do there?
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