Knowledge Base

Organizing your leads, deals, contact people, projects, organizations, activities and emails is essential to your sales process. Pipedrive helps you organize all your items and link them together for better visibility.

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.

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Mail

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.