Working with leads

A lead is one sales opportunity: a shopper who asked about a unit, booked a test ride, valued a trade or started a chat. Leads arrive on their own from your website forms, live chat, marketplaces and the API, and your team can add phone-ups and walk-ins by hand. Everything about the opportunity lives on the lead page: the inquiry, the vehicles, notes, tasks, messages, appointments and deals.

Before you start #

• Leads are part of every plan. The pipeline board, tasks, appointments, CSV import and sending messages from a lead need a plan with the sales CRM (Pro and Enterprise).
• Website forms create leads automatically. You can change which fields they ask for under Marketing › Forms (see promotions and forms).

Find a lead #

1. Open Sales › Leads.
2. Use the filters to narrow the list: Search (name, email or phone), Status, Source, Priority, Assigned, Location and a From / To date range. Select Filter, or Reset to clear them.
3. Choose Sort to order by Newest, Oldest, Follow-up date or Priority.
4. Select a customer name to open the lead.

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1. New lead adds a phone-up or walk-in by hand.
2. Import CSV and Export CSV move leads in and out in bulk.
3. Filters narrow the list. Unassigned leads are one click away under Assigned.
4. Lead list shows status, source, priority, the assignee and the next follow-up date.

Add a lead by hand #

1. Open Sales › Leads and select New lead.
2. Enter the customer's First name, Last name, Email and Phone. You need at least an email or a phone number.
3. Pick the Source (for example Phone or Walk in) and a Priority (low, normal, high or hot).
4. Optionally add What are they looking for?, an Interested vehicle, the Location, a Next action and a Follow-up date.
5. Under Assign to, leave Auto (round-robin) to let the system pick a salesperson, or choose a person.
6. Select Create lead.

If the email or phone matches a customer who already has an open lead, MotoDealerHQ shows a Possible duplicate warning. Tick Create anyway if a possible duplicate is found to continue, or open their profile instead. When the match is a customer a colleague is working with, the warning says so without showing who it is. A matching customer is reused, so you never get two customer records for one person.

Update a lead #

The lead page is where you work the deal day to day.

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1. Update lead: change the Stage, Priority, Next action, Follow-up date, Location and Estimated value. When you mark a lead lost, fill in Lost reason (when marking lost). Select Save.
2. Tasks: add a to-do with a type, a due date and an assignee (see tasks).
3. Customer: contact details, preferred contact method and consent at a glance, with a link to the Customer profile.
4. Deals & deposits: start a New deal or see deposits (see deals and desking).
5. Assignment: hand the lead to another salesperson with Assign.

The page also has Interested vehicles (add or remove units from your inventory), Notes (internal only), the Conversation with the customer (see messages), Financing, Automation, Appointments (Schedule appointment, see appointments) and the Activity timeline, which records every change, message, note and assignment for you.

On your phone #

The lead page works on a phone. A bar of quick actions stays at the bottom of the screen: Call, Message, Note, Task and Update jump straight to the right place.

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1. Lead and stage at the top.
2. Quick actions at the bottom.

To get the console on your home screen with notifications, see install the app.

Import leads from a CSV file #

Use this to bring over a lead list from a spreadsheet or another CRM.

1. Open Sales › Leads and select Import CSV.
2. Choose a CSV file (up to 2 MB and 2,000 rows), or paste the CSV text into the box. The first row must be a header row.
3. Select Preview (dry run). Nothing is saved yet.
4. Check the Columns table. For each column in your file, MotoDealerHQ shows an example value and suggests what to Use as: First name, Last name, Full name (split into first and last), Email, Phone, Lead status, Message, Note or Ignore this column. Common export headers such as "First Name", "E-mail", "Mobile" or "Comments" are recognized for you.
5. Change any mapping that is wrong and select Update preview.
6. Read the preview. It shows how many rows will be imported and how many skipped, and why (for example email or phone required, invalid email or duplicate of row 7). The Customer column says whether each row matches an existing customer or creates a new one.
7. Select Import N lead(s). Use Start over to pick a different file.

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1. Upload a file from your computer.
2. Or paste CSV text straight from a spreadsheet.
3. Preview first: nothing is saved until you confirm.

Imported leads get the source CSV import. They are not assigned automatically and do not send new-lead notifications, so a big import does not flood your team. Assign them from the lead list afterwards.

Export leads #

1. Open Sales › Leads and set the filters you want.
2. Select Export CSV. The file contains the leads that match your filters.

Exports follow the same visibility rules as the list, and every export is recorded in the audit log.

Tips #

• Set a Follow-up date every time you touch a lead. The list can sort by it, and overdue follow-ups are easy to spot.
• New leads that nobody contacts trigger an aging alert to managers when that workflow is on (see automation and SLAs).
• Moving a lead out of New records the time of first contact. Your response-time reports use it.
• Multi-rooftop dealerships can hand a lead to another store with Move to another rooftop on the lead page (see locations).

Permissions #

Limitations #