Common Lead Status Mistakes to Avoid

Lead and Opportunity statuses are customizable to your sales process so you can track a lead’s progress through your sales funnel. However, we often see customers creating statuses to organize information that would be better accomplished with another Close feature. Here are the top mistakes we see customers make and tips for how to correct them.

Mistake #1: Creating lead statuses for call or email activities

Example: “Not Called”, "Email 1", "Email 2", “Call 3”, No Answer”, “Outbound Prospecting”, “Reached”

Think of Lead Statuses as stages your leads go through on the way to a Closed/Won Opportunity. Lead Statuses are meant to indicate a meaningful shift in the lead's relationship to your company. There’s no need to create a status to keep track of whom you have called or emailed or whom you plan on calling or emailing because there’s been no meaningful shift yet in that lead's purchasing journey.

Instead, Close's powerful search tool can keep track of your completed calls or the prospects you plan to call. Use the search filters on the right hand side of the page to create a Smart View to accomplish this instead. The advantage in using Smart Views is that leads flow dynamically from one SV to another, based on the filters you choose, eliminating the need for a rep to do unnecessary data entry.

Mistake #2: Creating a lead or opportunity status to assign leads to particular reps

Example: lead_status: "Liz", "Kevin’s leads”, “ECT Lead List”

We want to track the meaningful movement of leads through your sales funnel. Using a status to assign leads to reps causes inaccuracies in tracking what stage your leads are in and diminishes your ability to report on pipeline.

Instead, use a custom field to create ownership and lead assignment in Close.

Mistake #3: Creating a status to define a category of lead

Example: “CES 2017”, "E3 2016", “Real Estate Company”, “Accountant”, “Food & Hospitality”

Use Custom Fields to track categories instead of creating lead statuses. Typically, you don’t want to include a category as a lead status unless that category is permanent. Otherwise, you lose the ability to track that lead’s progress through your funnel, as you can only have one status at a time.