Handbook / Winning the work
Leads and the enquiry pipeline
The call gets written down once, and everything downstream inherits from it.
A lead is somebody who has asked about work. It holds who rang, what they want, the address, a budget range, and - the part people skip - the next step with a date on it. That last field is what stops an enquiry from quietly going cold.
- Take the callLeads â New enquiry. Name and phone are the only things you truly need; everything else can follow.
- Put the address inIt becomes the property record later, so it is worth getting right at this point.
- Set a budget rangeLow and high. The pipeline totals use the midpoint, so a rough range is far better than nothing.
- Say what happens nextA next action and a date. Leads sort by that date, so the ones going stale rise to the top.
- Log every call after thatThe Log a call button records what was said and moves the lead to contacted in one action.
The enquiry pipeline
Sources are tracked - called in, referral, website, repeat client, walk-in, bid board, social - so you can see which ones actually turn into contracts rather than which ones make the phone ring.
Turning it into a job
One action on the lead does all of this at once, inside a single transaction, so it either all happens or none of it does:
- a client record, from the name, company and contact details;
- a property at that address - matched to an existing one if the address is already on file, however it was typed;
- a project, linked to both, with the office owner already set as the internal contact;
- the closeout checklist, applied ready for the end of the job;
- and every photograph the client emailed in, carried across into the project file.
Eleanor's enquiry came in as a phone call with a $95kâ$130k range and "site visit to measure" as the next step. Her photographs of the old kitchen went on the enquiry the same morning, and they are still on the job today - the crew can see the room as she described it.
See the pipelineUndoing things
| What happened | The way back |
|---|---|
| Wrong details on a lead | Edit it. Nothing downstream exists yet, so nothing to reconcile. |
| Marked won by mistake | Set the status back. Status on a lead is a label, not a lock. |
| Converted a lead that should not have been | The client, property and project all exist now and are edited or deleted individually. The lead itself keeps its link. |
| Deleting a converted lead | Refused - it became a project, and the trail from enquiry to contract is part of the record. Archive it instead. |
Access: Anyone who can manage clients.