ⓘ Note: Leads are turned off by default on new accounts. For instructions on activating Leads, go to the section Turning the Leads Section On/Off.
Leads are your potential business opportunities. These are contacts you’ve made that might become a customer, but need more investigative work to confirm that this is the case. The process of investigating the lead as a potential customer is called qualifying.
In Copper, these contacts that you’ve made but haven’t yet gotten the chance to qualify can be entered in the Leads section.
In this article, we’ll learn all about Leads, including how and when to use them:
When Should I Use Leads?
When you want to keep your contact database uncluttered.
Using leads allows you to keep potential contacts, that may require further qualifying, separate from the rest of your contacts. By only converting leads that pass this qualification process, your records won’t be cluttered with unqualified, junk contacts.
When you have a qualifying process for potential business.
If you don’t have a qualifying process for your leads and each potential business opportunity is immediately put into a pipeline stage as a potential customer, then the leads area may not be useful for you.
When you receive a lot of leads at one time.
Having a place to store all your leads while you move through the qualifying process can be useful - but if you only handle one lead at a time, a separate database to store that one lead may not be necessary.
Turning the Leads section On/Off
When Leads are turned on you'll see the Leads icon
in the left navigation menu.
If you need to disable or enable the Leads section, follow the instructions below:
Click the Settings icon on the left menu.
In the Settings screen, scroll down the left side menu to the Customize section. Click Lead Statuses.
In the Lead Management screen, click the toggle button in the Enable Leads section. If the toggle button is grey, then your Leads section will be disabled. If the toggle button is blue, your Leads section will be enabled.
Customize the Lead Status Field
When you create a lead, you'll be asked to fill out fields to give that lead context within your business. One of those default fields is 'Lead Status.' This asks the question: What stage of your lead qualification process is this record in? The options are:
New
Open
Unqualified
Junk
You define what the above statuses mean in your workflow. You can also add custom statuses on this page to tailor Copper to your workflow.
You can filter leads by 'Lead Status' so you can prioritize your outreach. It's also helpful to create saved filters of certain lead statuses to easily access.
Creating a Lead
You can create leads two ways:
Adding a single Lead at a time
Importing Leads from another source
Each method is accessible by clicking the ADD NEW button at the top of the Leads section.
We’ll go over each method separately.
Adding a New Lead
Click the ADD NEW button. A drop-down menu will appear.
Select Add Lead. A new dialog box will appear.
Fill out as much information as you have in the Add a New Lead dialog box. The only required field is the Name field, all other blank fields are optional unless otherwise indicated.
Once you’ve finished filling out all the information you’ve gathered, click the Save button in the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
Importing Leads
For instructions on importing, please view our documentation on How to Import Data into Copper, How to Import Data from Excel or CSV or How to Import from Google Contacts.
Converting a Lead
Once you’ve qualified a lead by confirming that they’re interested in trying your product, you’ll want to convert your Lead to a Person, and if applicable create a new Open Opportunity for the potential sale.
At this point, you’ll want to gather more information about your lead such as their company, title, value of the potential sale, and any notes that you’d like to record about this qualified lead.
See how it's done:
To convert your Lead into a Person, follow the steps below:
Select the lead you’d like to convert by clicking on it.
Please note: You can view a record in Copper by clicking directly on the name to open the full screen view, or by clicking on the line of the record to view it in the side panel. In this article, we’ll be using the full screen view.
You’ll notice the record is divided into 3 sections. Let’s go through each one separately:
In the Details section, you'll enter all the information you've gathered about your lead. You can fill in any extra information doesn't have it's own specific field in the Description field.
If you'd like to create additional, custom fields, you can learn how here.
In the Activity Log, you can log notes regarding any contact you’ve made with this lead/person, as well as add any notes specific to your interactions.
Aside from logging notes and activities in the activity log, you can also add comments and reactions. Learn how here.
In the Related section, you view and create specific tasks related to the lead and assign them to members of your company. You’re also able to set times, dates, and notes regarding the task created.
If you’d like to reorder the related section, we’ve got instructions to do so here.
Once you’ve filled in the information that you’d like to add about your lead, click the Convert Lead button in the Details tab. A new dialog box will appear.
In the new dialog box, you can specify the owner of the new Person record, what Contact Type they are (i.e. potential or current customer), and if you’d like to simultaneously create an Opportunity during the conversion. Once you’ve filled out the information that you’ve collected, click the Convert button in the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
If you’re creating an Opportunity during Lead conversion, you’ll also specify the Opportunity Name, which Pipeline it falls into, a close date, and a value. For more info on Opportunities, you can read up here.
If you’ve completed the converting process successfully, you’ll get a dialog box confirming the conversion.
You’re all set and have completed a successful Lead conversion!
Please Note: It’s currently not possible to convert a person back to a lead, but we do have some workarounds to help you if you’re stuck.
Deleting Leads
If you have a duplicate lead or decide that you don’t want to pursue a lead, you may want to delete the lead. In this section, we’ll teach you how!
Select the Lead or Leads that you wish to delete.
For a single Lead, either click on the name to open the Lead record full screen, or click the name line of desired Lead to open the side panel.
For multiple Leads, check the box to the left of the desired records to select them.
Click the three dots at the found either above the Details section, or in the top right corner of the side panel. A new drop-down menu will appear.
Select Delete from the drop-down menu.
A new dialog box will appear asking you to confirm you would like to delete this lead. Click OK.
The lead should now be deleted and will no longer appear in your leads list!
Filtering Your Leads
Filtering allows you to view a partial list of your records, based on a criteria you’ve specified. Filtering leads uses the same process as filtering other records within Copper. Check out our great filtering records documentation for more info: Filtering Records.
Still have questions? Ask in our Community, and get answers from our Customer Success Team as well as fellow users.