What are leads in CRM (customer relationship management)?

Leads represent potential customers, individuals, or companies interested in your product/service. Use your CRM software as a sales lead database by storing leads on the platform.

How does lead management work?

With the best sales lead software, you can effectively manage leads from all lead sources. Some free online lead management systems offer sales lead management software solutions for small businesses and larger corporations. These solutions should have tools and features that streamline lead generation, qualification and prioritisation.

Why is lead management important?

Lead management enables you to nurture your leads, helping you focus your outreach and prioritise and close the sales cycle faster.

Sales lead management software

What is lead management software?

Lead management is crucial for any successful sales organisation. Every lead needs special care and attention to convert prospects to paying customers.

The best sales lead management software uses features like qualification and prioritisation to help salespeople make the most of each opportunity.

Pipedrive’s lead management and generation features include Leads Inbox, Web Forms, Chatbot, Live Chat, Prospector, Web Visitors and many more, enabling our customers to:

Increase the number of deals in their pipeline by an average of 93%
Increase the average value of their closed deals by 21%
Reduce the time it takes them to close a deal by 46%

Full access. No credit card required.

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Popular lead and deal management features

SOFTWARE FEATURE

Pipeline management

Pipeline management should be the core of a sales CRM’s functionality. Still, some lack sales lead management features, while others are overly technical and difficult to get the hang of.

Pipedrive’s visual and intuitive interface makes pipeline management a breeze. Unlike other lead management tools, Pipedrive lets you create and customise as many pipelines as you need to reflect your unique sales process.

To improve your sales momentum and boost conversion rates, Pipedrive focuses on activities. For example, coloured cues mark deals that need your attention and overdue tasks, so you always know what to tackle first.

Use Pipedrive’s statistics tool to extract just about any piece of data in seconds and make more informed business decisions.

Includes:

Customisation

Intuitive design

Stats

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Deal and lead labels

Let your team add colour-coded labels to each deal to organise data and speed up the sales process

Import leads and deals

Bulk-import leads and deals from spreadsheets with Pipedrive’s importing function

Product catalogue

Create a customisable catalogue of your company’s goods or services, including costs, notes and more

Deal rotting

Get notified when a deal stays idle for longer than the defined rotting period

SOFTWARE FEATURE

Leads Inbox

When you launch a new marketing campaign and leads flow in, it can be easy for the first stage of your sales pipeline to get clogged.

Pipedrive’s Leads Inbox helps you declutter your CRM and improve your pre-sales communication with prospects. Store incoming leads in the Leads Inbox until you’re ready to qualify them. Filter, sort and edit your leads, then add activities to stop them from getting cold.

Use our Smart Bcc or email sync features to transfer new leads from your Leads Inbox to your email. Once qualified, you can easily convert a lead to a deal and move it to your pipeline.

SOFTWARE FEATURE

Chat

Your business website is an important source of new leads, and engaging with web visitors can significantly improve lead generation. Pipedrive offers two chat options to help you qualify web visitors and turn them into hot leads:

Chatbot is a conversational pop-up that automatically interacts with web visitors 24/7. You can customise its questions, replies and design, then use it to collect prospect data and pre-qualify leads.
Live Chat is an extension of the Chatbot feature. Instantly assign leads to your salespeople or wait until Chatbot has qualified them.

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SOFTWARE FEATURE

Web Forms

Web forms let web visitors contact businesses and help drive more leads through the sales funnel, but creating them can be time-consuming.

Pipedrive’s lead management software helps you create highly-customisable web forms for your website and share them via a link on social media. Filter and prioritise your leads by adding qualifying questions.

Automatically import leads from Web Forms into your pipeline, contacts or Leads Inbox – your choice. You'll also receive an email notification to follow up with the lead while it’s still hot.

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Custom filters and grouping

Set up personal filters in Pipedrive and share them with other stakeholders

Contact timeline

Get a visual representation of your activities with contacts over time

Web Visitors

Track visitor activity on your website and identify the companies most likely to become customers

Live Chat

Directly engage with your website visitors and personalise your lead qualification process

SOFTWARE FEATURE

Messaging Inbox

Importing contacts from WhatsApp or Facebook to Pipedrive is a tedious process.

With Pipedrive’s Messaging Inbox, you can:

See all Facebook Messenger conversations in Pipedrive
Assign Facebook conversations to sales team members
Create new contacts or link chats to existing ones
Reply to lead, deal and contact messages

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SOFTWARE FEATURE

Rank top prospects with custom lead scoring

When you have multiple leads in your pipeline, it can be difficult to know which one presents the biggest opportunity.

Pipedrive Pulse enables you to score and prioritise your best-fit leads and identify your next best action.

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Join over 100,000 companies

Lead and deal management features

LeadBooster add-on

Benefit from a 4-in-1 lead generation add-on bundle

Prospector

Find high-quality leads based on set criteria and optimise your lead capture flow

Chatbot and Live Chat

Engage your web visitors and personalise the lead management process

Web Forms

Create embeddable forms for your website to collect visitor contact information

Web Visitors add-on

Track visitor activity on your website and identify the companies most likely to convert

The benefits of lead management software

Pipedrive’s sales lead software is designed to:

Generate more leads
Automate lead qualifying
Prioritise leads
Increase conversion rate
Enhance deal values
Set up lead nurturing workflows
Close deals faster
Automate lead tracking

Used by over 100,000 companies in 179 countries

Our sales process has improved by 20% and overall hours spent on administrative tasks has been reduced by 40%.

Jana HodboďováChief Sales Officer, Leadspicker

Pipedrive is significantly better value than other CRMs but still has an easy-to-use interface. It became apparent that it was a great fit for our team at a cost we could afford.

Oliver LeeSales Director, CreativeRace

If you want to scale and manage your client base effectively you need a CRM, like Pipedrive, simple as that.

Eden BrownleeDirector and Senior Digital Strategy Consultant, Accentuate Web Design & Marketing

Leads and deals FAQ

Lead management software has features dedicated to helping salespeople make the most of their leads and prospects. The best lead management software lets you filter contacts based on demographics, so you can nurture leads that are valuable and focus your sales activities on warming up the best contacts. No matter the number of leads you have in your database, lead management software should help you nourish the right prospects at the right time throughout the customer journey.

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