Chapter 9 of 32 · Grow
CRM: customers and leads
A CRM (customer relationship manager) is the address book and sales record of your business. Everyone you might sell to, or already have, is a customer here. Each one moves through six stages: New lead, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, then Won or Lost. The CRM has its own menu: Home, Leads, Deals and Contacts, then Activities, Reports and Automations, plus shortcuts to Find leads and Ask Winston.
How it works
What you can do here
- Add customers one at a time, or import them from a spreadsheet
- See your pipeline, forecast, win rate and tasks due on the CRM home page
- Edit any detail straight in the Leads table, and add your own columns
- Change many customers at once: stage, priority, owner and tags
- Export your customers to a spreadsheet
1. The CRM home page
- 1
Open CRM
Pick CRM in the Grow group. You land on My Dashboard.
- 2
Read the numbers
The tiles show your Open pipeline (the value of deals not yet won or lost), the Forecast, your Win rate and how many Tasks are due. Use Period and Year to change the dates.
- 3
Look at the charts
Deals won over time shows your progress. Deal Sources shows where customers came from, such as Automated Pipelines, chat or an import.
- 4
See money received
Customers have paid shows payments from the Finance tab that you've linked to customers.
2. Adding customers
- 1
Press Add customer
A form opens: Add a customer or lead.
- 2
Fill in what you know
Name is all you need. Add the company, email, phone, job title, deal value, stage, whether they're hot, warm or cold, and tags such as VIP or referral.
- 3
Save
Press Add customer. They appear in Leads under their stage.
- 4
Or just tell Winston
In Winston AI, say something like "Add Sarah Jones from Bright Dental, she wants a quote" and he'll put her in the CRM.
3. Importing a spreadsheet
Already keep customers in Excel or Google Sheets? Bring them all in at once.
- 1
Save your sheet as CSV
In Excel or Google Sheets, choose Download or Save as, then CSV. The first row must name the columns, such as Name, Email, Company.
- 2
Press Import
It's on the CRM home page and the Contacts page. Choose the CSV file.
- 3
Check the result
Winston tells you how many new customers he added, and how many existing ones he filled in. Nobody is duplicated.
4. Working in the Leads table
Leads shows every customer as a row, grouped by stage. It works like a spreadsheet.
- 1
Change a detail
Click any cell, such as Stage, Owner, Priority, Deal value or Expected close, and change it. It saves as you go.
- 2
Search and filter
Use Search customers, and the owner and priority filters, to narrow the list.
- 3
Choose your columns
Press Show columns to hide ones you don't use.
- 4
Add your own column
Press Add a column to track anything else, such as plan, renewal date or how they heard of you. Give it a name and, for a list of options, the choices separated by commas (for example Basic, Pro, Enterprise).
- 5
Change many at once
Tick several rows. Then use Move to stage, Set priority, Assign to, or Add tag on all of them together. Press Clear selection when done.
- 6
Add a task
Use + Add a task on a row to remind yourself to follow up.
Stage changes made here and in Automated Pipelines stay in step, so a lead never has two different stages.
Try it yourself
Doing is the fastest way to learn. Open the tab and try these:
- Add one real customer by hand with a deal value.
- Add a column called "How they found us" with a few choices.
- Tick two customers and move them both to Contacted.
Common questions
What's the difference between a lead and a customer?
In Winston they live in the same list. The stage says where they are: a New lead hasn't been contacted; a Won customer is paying.