Sales is a CRM for the businesses you sell to: salons, shops, distributors. Each business is one record for its whole life, from a name on a cold list to a customer, and its calls, visits, notes and history stay with it as it moves. Its people are clients of yours, so a meeting with them is booked like any other visit. It is switched on as Sales CRM and map in Settings, Menu.
The four kinds of record
- A lead is a name on a list, such as a cold-call list. Leads are kept apart: the other lists never show them unless you ask.
- A prospect reached out (a message from your website, a meeting booked, a reply, a wholesale application) or your team started working it. Its status is New, Attempting contact or Working, and only moves forward on its own: a call, email, text or check-in is attempting contact; a meeting, a visit with someone there or a reply is working. One that came in on its own is new to the team until someone opens it, and the number beside Sales on the top bar counts those.
- An account is a business you sell to, converted from a lead or a prospect, with its contacts and its opportunities. A location of a chain can sit under its parent account.
- Not a fit is a business that is not one, with why. It can be taken back.
The tabs across Sales go Leads, Prospects, Contacts, Accounts and Pipeline, then Tasks, Reports, Map and Setup. Pipeline holds the opportunities and the quotes, Reports the figures and the commissions, and Map the map, the routes and the territories, each a tab in the row under it.
Setting it up
- Open Sales and choose Setup (it takes the business settings switch).
- Under Stages, check the stages opportunities move through. Each is numbered in the order the work flows, named for what is happening, says how likely a win is there (% to win), and can move an opportunity in on its own when something happens: a demo or meeting is booked, it is done, the business signs up, or it starts paying or orders.
- Under Labels, add the labels a team marks cards with: Hot, Needs samples, Trade show.
- Under Who Sells, choose Make a login a rep for each person who sells. Set where their routes start and which map app opens their directions.
- Under Notifications, choose which news the team hears of, who the sales managers are, and the stages marked "tell me" (see below).
- Under Scoring, weigh what makes a business worth working (see below).
- Under Sequences, add the follow-ups your reps put businesses on (see below).
Bringing in a list
Leads, Bring in a list takes a CSV of up to 200,000 businesses from a spreadsheet or another system, as Cold leads, kept apart from your prospects and accounts, or as Prospects, for a list of people who reached out; brought in as prospects, each rep is told once for the whole list. The list is checked against what is here (the same email, phone, or name in the same city) before anything is added, comes in a batch at a time in the background, and can be undone as one while none of it has been worked (a call, a note, a stage, an opportunity) or changed. When it is done, Review likely duplicates gives what it brought in a second look (see below). See Bringing your records over.
Working a lead or a prospect
- Add one by hand with Add a Lead or Add a Prospect.
- Open it to keep a call, an email, a text, a meeting or a note, add a task with a day it is due and who does it, and see its whole history.
- Give it a rep. Leads, prospects and accounts can be picked several at a time, given to a rep together, or put on a sequence together.
- When it is a fit, choose Convert to an account: its person becomes its primary contact and one of your clients, and its first opportunity can open with it.
- When it is not, choose Mark it not a fit with why.
Accounts and contacts
An account holds its contacts (Add a person, Make primary), its opportunities, its activity, its visits, its files and what it is worth a month. Contacts lists every person across every account. A wholesale account is a CRM account too: one applying online is a prospect, one approved is an account.
Opportunities on the board
An opportunity is potential business with an account: an opening order, a launch, a contract.
- Choose New opportunity on the Pipeline or on an account.
- Find the account, say what it is for, its amount and when it is Expected to close.
- It lands in the first stage. Drag its card from column to column as it moves; a won stage makes its account a customer, and Mark it lost keeps why.
Open a card for what a team works it with: labels, the people on it, a checklist, files and a picture, the products and services it is for line by line (the amount then adds itself up), and the Next step with when and by whom. Each column shows its count and what its cards are worth, weighed by the stage's chance of a win. Narrow the board by rep, label or when it is closing.
Quotes
A quote is what an opportunity is for, priced, in your brand, for the account to accept online. It is made from the opportunity's lines.
- Open the opportunity and choose its Quotes tab, then Make a quote. It starts as a draft with the opportunity's lines and prices, for the person the opportunity is with, holding for 30 days, at the tax rate where it ships, with the terms of your last quote.
- Change it: pick products by name (and which option, for a product that has them), add lines of your own, take a percent off a line, say whether a line is taxed, add shipping, say whether it ships or is picked up, and add a note to them and your terms. See the PDF shows it as it was last saved.
- Under Send it, send it By email with a message, or choose I sent it another way to mark it sent and copy its link yourself. Email needs the app's email switched on.
They open the link with no sign-in, in their language, and download the PDF there. They accept it by typing their name and ticking I accept (when, who and from where is kept), ask for changes with a message, or turn it down. Each answer is on the opportunity's timeline and gives its rep a task. Once it is past the day it holds until, the page says it expired and offers to ask for a new one.
A quote that was sent is kept as it was. To change it, choose Make a new version: a copy to change and send, which replaces the one before (still there to read, and its link points them to the new one).
Once a quote is accepted, the opportunity moves to the stage set to move when its quote is accepted (else the first won stage), and the quote becomes the account's wholesale order at the quoted prices: on its terms with its invoice when the account is on terms and within its credit limit, else sent to them to pay by card. A quote for an account without a wholesale account, or for lines that are not products in its catalog, becomes no order on its own: the rep gets a task saying why. The stage set to move when a quote is sent moves when one is.
Pipeline, Quotes lists every quote, the latest version of each: Open, Waiting, Accepted, Turned down, Expired, Drafts or All. Choose one to open it on its opportunity.
Sequences and commissions
A sequence is a follow-up by day. The sales manager adds them under Setup, Sequences, step by step: the day (day 1 is the day a business is put on it), and whether it is a Call, an Email, a Text or a To-do. An email or a text can fill in {first_name}, {name} (their business), {business} (yours) and {rep}.
- A call or a to-do is a task for the business's rep, due on its day.
- An email or a text goes to the business's person only when they said yes to hearing from you; when they did not, the rep gets a task to reach them instead.
- Put a business on one from its record (Put on a sequence), or pick several on a list and choose Put on a sequence. The record shows each step done, the next one with its day, and the ones to come.
- It stops when they reply: a text back, a message on your website, a meeting booked or held, a visit, or an answer to a quote. A reply by email reaches your inbox, not the app, so choose They replied on the record. Take them off stops it by hand.
Commissions are under Reports, Commissions, by the month or the quarter. The sales manager adds the Plans: one for everyone, and any for one rep or for a territory paid differently (a rep's own plan comes first, then their territory's, then everyone's). A plan pays a percent of the opportunities a rep wins or of the orders their accounts place, with steps if you want them ("5%, then 7% from $10,000"): like tax brackets, each part of the period's total is paid at its own step's rate. An opportunity is its rep's unless it is split on its card (Commission Split, in shares that add up to 100%).
Each rep's period shows what they were credited with line by line, the rate, and what it comes to, with a Statement PDF. The sales manager chooses Mark paid with the day it was paid; a month inside a quarter marked paid (or the other way round) can't be marked twice. Paying is your own: nothing here pays anyone or connects to payroll. A rep sees their own commissions only.
Enriching a business from Apollo, LinkedIn or Clay
A lead, a prospect or an account with blanks can be filled in from a provider the business connects: Apollo, LinkedIn (through Proxycurl, since LinkedIn has no public API) or Clay. The business enters its own key for each under Settings, Connections, and each lookup spends its own credits there.
- Open the record and choose Enrich. The provider is asked what it knows: the website, phone, address, industry, size, social links, a description, and the people who run it with their titles and emails where the provider unlocks them.
- What comes back is a proposal under Details, only for the fields that are blank, each saying which provider it came from and when. Nothing anyone typed is ever proposed over, and a website at another domain than the one on the record means nothing is proposed at all, said why.
- Untick anything you do not want and choose Fill in what is ticked. A field someone typed between the proposal and this moment is skipped and named. On an account, a person ticked becomes one of its people; on a lead or a prospect, the first person named fills the person to talk to.
- The card then says where each filled field came from, and keeps the industry, size, links and description with the record.
Clay answers later: the record goes to your Clay table, your own workflow there enriches it, and the answer comes back to the app on its own; the card says it is waiting and shows the proposal when it arrives. A vendor is enriched the same way from its record under Inventory, Vendors.
The business sets a cap on lookups a month under Settings, Connections, where this month's count shows; 100 until it sets one. The assistant can put an enrichment forward, and you approve it before anything is asked. Read Connections for connecting the providers.
List, table or grid
Accounts, prospects, leads and contacts can be seen as a List, a Table or a Grid, and opportunities as a Board, a Table or a Grid. In a table, tick the columns to show, drag them into order and wider, and sort by any column. Save a set of columns, sort and filters as a view ("My Florida salons"); the sales manager can share a view with the team. Download any list as a spreadsheet, as it is seen.
Notifications
The team hears of four kinds of news: a new prospect (however it came in: written in, booked, replied, applied for wholesale, brought in from a list, or made one by hand), a task given to someone, an opportunity reaching a stage marked "tell me", and a business going quiet (a prospect, or an account with an open opportunity, with nothing kept on it for the days set). The business's rep hears of it, or the sales managers when it has none; the sales managers hear of the kinds ticked Tell the sales managers too, and so do a territory's managers when that is on. Whoever did it is never told of their own work, and each piece of news is told once.
Each person chooses how they hear of each kind, from the menu under the business's name, Notifications: A text, An email, A to-do in the To-do list, A notification on my phone (in the BookNovi app, held through the quiet hours set there; see Notifications on your phone), or Nothing, and their Quiet hours, on the business's clock. A text or an email that comes in quiet hours waits until they end. A text or an email goes to the phone and email on their place on the team; without one, or before texts and emails are set up, it comes as a to-do. A new prospect's to-dos are done once someone on the team opens it, and a task's once it is ticked done. A list brought in as prospects tells each rep once, not once a row. Setup, Notifications, What was told lately shows whom each went to, how, and why when it went another way.
Scores
Every lead, prospect and account is scored from 0 to 100, shown beside it on the lists and on its record, and any list can be sorted by it. A score is made of five parts, each weighed under Setup, Scoring:
- Kind of business: all of it for a kind you sell to best (none picked: any known kind), half for another kind.
- In a territory: all of it in one of your territories. Left out until there are territories.
- Worked lately: all of it for a call, email, text, meeting, note or visit today, falling to nothing after the days set (90 to start).
- What it is worth: its open opportunities, or what it is worth a month for a year, against the amount that scores all of it.
- Can be reached: half for an email, half for a phone.
The score is what a business earned of the parts in play, so the weights need not add up to 100. It is worked out again whenever the business changes and every night. Tap the score on a record to see what each part earned.
Likely duplicates and merging
Leads, Review Duplicates shows businesses that look like the same one, side by side: they share a phone, an email, a website, or a name in the same city. People shows people at the accounts who share an email or a phone, or a name at the same account. For each pair, choose Merge… or Not the same (the pair is never offered again).
A merge shows the two side by side. Pick the one to keep: it keeps its own name and number, and takes the other's details where it has none. Everything on the other moves to it: activity, opportunities, people, files, visits, route stops and projects (for people: appointments, sales, orders and notes). It stays the further along of the two, so a lead merged into an account is part of the account. The other is then taken away, and its old number and links open the one kept.
To merge two found by hand, open one and choose Merge with… from its ⋯ menu; on an account's People, choose Merge… beside a person.
A merge can't be undone, so it is shown in full before it is done. A merge is refused when it would join two different wholesale accounts or two sign-ups, or two people who both have store credit, the same membership, a place in the same class, or card details kept with the payment processor.
Tasks
Tasks lists the tasks still to do across the CRM, Mine or Everyone's, with the overdue ones first. A task is added on an account, a prospect or an opportunity, under its activity.
Best practices
- Keep cold lists as leads. Only make a business a prospect when someone is actually working it or it reached out.
- Open new prospects the same day. The count on Sales is a promise to someone who reached out.
- Log every call and visit, even a no-answer. It is what moves a prospect's status, and what the next rep reads.
- Give every opportunity an amount and a close date. The board's totals and the forecast are only as good as these.
- Set the stage percentages from what actually happens, and revisit them each quarter.
- Work the highest scores first, and sort the leads by score after bringing in a list.
- Review likely duplicates after every list. Two records of one business split its history between two reps.
- Send a quote rather than a price in an email: an accepted quote is the order, with nothing to type twice.
- Keep sequences short and human. Four or five steps over two weeks, each saying something new, does better than a long drip.