Overview - How Do Leads Work

Clicking on the Leads tab in the main navigation bar takes you to a page where you can enter and track all your prospects through every stage in the sales cycle as well as access the tools you need to convert them into Events.

You can create an unlimited number of Leads in your account as well as set up multiple Lead Capture forms to put on your organization's Website that will deposit captured Leads into your Planning Pod account (and notify you when they come in). NOTE: For more about setting up your lead capture forms, see Setting Up Lead Capture/Collection in Planning Pod.

The Sales Pipeline panel within each lead allows you to edit the sales pipeline step to which your lead belongs. As you manage your inquiries from lead to booking, this tool provides you with a way to track and report on lead status. NOTE: For more about creating/customizing your sales pipeline, see Creating a Custom Lead/Sales Pipeline.

You also have the ability to edit the status of your lead through the Status panel, which allows you to place the lead on hold, update the lead source, or close the lead. 

You can use the Tags tool to create labels for each step in your sales process and apply these Tags to your Leads. You can also place a Hold on a date/time and venue/space for a Lead and schedule the Hold to expire at a certain date (in case a prospect needs some time to make their decision and you want to put their date and space on hold as a favor).

You can assign a preferred Event date/time as well as one more more Contacts to a Lead, including one or more client Contacts as well as internal staff members who are responsible for following up on the Lead. You can also assign one or more Venues and Spaces/Rooms to a Lead as well as create a Vendor List for a Lead.

When a Lead converts into an Event, you can click on the "Book Event" button in the top right corner of the Lead Dashboard to create a new Event from the Lead (which will pull all the information from the Lead into the new Event). 

Inside of each Lead, you have access to several tools for managing Lead details, including:

• Appointments
• Files
• Forms Builder
• Notes
• Proposals
• Contracts
• To-Do's
• Worksheets
• Food & Beverage Tool (Venue Management packages only)

From the Lead Dashboard, you can do the following for each Lead:

• View recent key activities, overdue items, waiting items and upcoming items for each tool.
• View the Activity Log to see what actions users have taken inside the Lead.
• View potential date/time conflicts for the lead.
• Assign Contacts to the Lead (once you do this, you can assign Contacts to items inside the Lead like To-Do's and Appointments).
• Add Vendors to the Vendor List.
• Assign Venue Spaces/Rooms to the Lead.
• Edit topline Lead details (lead name, start/end dates and times, lead color and thumbnail image).
• Change the status of the Lead (place a hold on it or close it) or delete the Lead.
• Edit the sales pipeline step that applies to your lead. 
• Update the lead source.
• Print out PDF reports.
• View a Calendar of all date-based items related to the lead.