How is Pipedrive data organized?
Organizing your leads, deals, contact people, projects, organizations, activities, products and emails is essential to your sales process. Pipedrive helps you organize all your items and link them together for better visibility.
To help you become familiar with Pipedrive, we offer sample data for you to try and test. Learn more about sample data in this article.
Leads
At the beginning of your sales process, you may have potential deals in your account that you’re not ready to start working on.
Pipedrive's Leads Inbox is a separate inbox to keep your prequalified leads in before they become deals. Once you decide which leads are ready, you can convert them to deals and add them directly to your pipeline. You can read more about our Leads Inbox in this article.
- You can use the “Add lead” button to add leads individually or by spreadsheet import, or use LeadBooster
- When adding a lead through the add lead dialog, all fields are optional except either the organization name or the person name
- When you’ve qualified a lead and are ready to pursue it as a deal in your pipeline, you can click “Convert to deal”. This will open a new dialog where you can define the pipeline, visibility and value of your new deal.
Deals
Ongoing transactions you’re pursuing with people or organizations in Pipedrive are tracked as deals, which are processed through the stages of your pipeline until they’re either won or lost.
Deals contain all of the actions taken while closing a sale. Deals will also pull all the information from the person or organization they’re associated with, which you can find in the detail view of that deal. In this article, you can read more about deals in Pipedrive.
- Deals can be linked to a person, organization or project. They can also have products added to them
- Deals track all events and movements that take place throughout your sales process
- Since a deal is connected to a contact, any actions you perform on the deal will also be reflected in the person/organization linked to it
- Deals can be imported from a previous CRM or a CSV or XLS file
- The progress of the deals in your account is tracked as progress in your account
People (contacts)
People contacts are the specific customers you’re selling to, and any information relating to each contact such as scheduled activities or emails will be tracked in the detail view of that person.
- People contacts can be linked to one organization
- They can have multiple deals open for them at the same time
- They can be synced with your contact provider, imported from a previous CRM, or imported from a CSV or XLS file
Organizations (contacts)
Organizations are the companies where contact people work. All people related to an organization will be listed in its detail view, along with any notes or activities linked to any people, leads, deals or projects related to the organization.
- Organizations contain information like a mailing address or industry information
- You can link multiple people, deals or projects to your organizations
- Organizations can be synced with your contact provider, imported from a previous CRM, or imported from a CSV or XLS file
Activities
An activity represents any action taken toward closing a sale. It can be a phone call, a lunch meeting, or any other event you schedule with a contact. You can schedule activities in relation to a person, organization, project, lead or deal. You can read this article for more information on activities in Pipedrive.
- Your activities can be synced with several calendar providers
- Activities can be linked to a person, organization, lead, deal or project
- Associating an activity with a deal, lead or project will also associate the activity with the linked person and/or organization
- Activities can be imported from a previous CRM or a CSV or XLS file
Projects
A project represents one or more deals under the umbrella of a larger goal. This can include both won and open deals, although projects are commonly created after a deal has been won.
- Projects can be linked to deals, people and organizations
- You can create tasks, subtasks and activities for your projects. Activities created for projects will be reflected in any linked people, organizations or deals
- Progress in a project is reflected in two ways:
- The progress bar, located in the detail view of a project, is based on completed tasks, subtasks and activities
- The kanban board, which shows the progression of the project through your company’s workflow
Products
Products are items you sell or trade, and are often linked to ongoing deals. Products have specific fields like product code, price and tax.
The mail tab holds all emails you decide to keep a record of in Pipedrive. Emails can be brought into your account using either the email sync tool or the Smart Bcc based on your plan.
- Emails can be linked to people, deals, leads or projects
- If the person you’ve emailed exists in Pipedrive, the email will be associated with them. If not, the email will create a new person and link that email thread to them
- Replies from your contacts are forwarded to your Pipedrive mailbox, and Pipedrive will document them in the same email thread as the original email
- Attachments in emails are available everywhere the email is linked and in the files tab of any detail page
- If the recipient contact is linked to a deal, the email will also be reflected there
Data relationships
Here’s a basic rundown of how the different data types relate.
| Leads | Deals | Leads represent potential deals that have not been fully vetted. Once a lead is vetted, it can be converted into a deal and added to your deals pipeline. |
| Contacts | Leads/deals/activities/mail | Contacts are those with whom you conduct deals, schedule activities, and send emails. They can be represented as individual people (e.g., Steve Johnson) or collective organizations (e.g., The Steve Factory). |
| Activities | Leads/deals/contacts | Activities can be linked to a lead, deal, or contact, but it’s not required as they can also be created without being linked to other data. |
| Leads/deals/contacts | Emails can be sent from or linked to leads, deals, or contacts if email sync is enabled. An email sent to an address already linked to a contact will automatically be saved there if the email address is only linked to one contact. If you don’t have email sync, you can still link emails to your leads, deals, and contacts using the Smart BCC link. |
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