Leads

What is a Lead?

A Lead is a prospective sales enquiry — someone who's shown interest but hasn't been confirmed as a customer yet. Leads are the flexible, early-stage side of the CRM, built for capturing information before anything is settled.

Custom Pipelines

Leads move through organisation-defined pipelines, made up of stages your organisation defines - not a fixed set. This means you can shape the pipelines you use around how you actually sell, rather than a generic Enquiry -> Quote -> Confirmed flow. An organisation can run multiple pipelines if differnet lead sources need different stages.

What a Lead Can Hold

• Custom Fields — capture whatever data matters for that lead type
• Attachments
• Enquiries — a Lead can have one or more linked Enquiries, each representing a specific conversation or opportunity
• Chat/messaging
• Internal notes & email correspondance (rebuild in progress)

Where Leads Come From

Leads typically enter the CRM via the embedded contact form on a supplier's site, or through your email inbox. Eleventh can connect with supported mailbox providers and monitor incoming emails for enquiries, automatically raising them in the system when they are detected.

What Happens Next

When a Lead is confirmed as a genuine customer relationship, it becomes a Contact — the CRM's record for confirmed customers and other business relationships. The Lead's hisotry isn't lost; it's the origin point for that relationship, and the created customer links directly back with the Lead — so you can jump back at any time.