What is a Lead vs. Deal in Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales customer relationship management (CRM) tool that enables sales teams to make more sales while doing less work. One of the most appealing features of using a CRM is organizing information and processes so sales teams stop missing out on communications and potential sales.

One way Pipedrive helps you do this is by letting you designate potential customers as “deals” or “leads.”

This article will define Pipedrive deals and leads, when to use them, and how to convert leads into deals.

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What are Leads?

Pipedrive leads are potential deals. A lead could be a contact you haven't communicated or worked with before. For example, someone may have visited your website and signed up for a newsletter.

Leads can also be the opportunities that stall out or aren't ready to move forward just yet. Maybe they need approval from their board of directors or supervisors, or they're waiting for the next fiscal year.

You also have other sales opportunities that are hotter: they're closer to making a buying decision, or they've engaged with you multiple times. These are deals — but you don't want to miss an opportunity with your leads, either. Leads occupy a distinct spot in Pipedrive, so your team can be aware of them, nurture them, and, hopefully, get them into the deal pipeline.

You can enter leads into Pipedrive manually one at a time, by importing a CSV file of many at once, or by connecting Pipedrive to a lead form, such as a Contact page on your website.

Using Leads in Pipedrive

Identifying leads and deals helps keep the deals workspace more manageable.

You can organize your leads in the Pipedrive Leads Inbox. The Leads Inbox is separate from the deal pipelines to avoid confusion and clutter, and Pipedrive lead management lets you classify leads as hot, warm, or cold.

One key difference between leads and deals: leads can't move along a sales pipeline. They need to be converted to deals before they can enter a pipeline.

Conversely, if a deal stalls out without being lost, it can be returned to lead status so your team can attend to other potential customers.

It's important to note that you don't have to use the Leads Inbox. If most of the leads you receive are already a warm sales opportunity, then it may make the most sense to create those opportunities as deals directly. But maybe you sell multiple products with unique sales funnels: when a person completes your webform, a lead can be created automatically, but you don't yet know which pipeline should house the deal. That's a great time to use the Leads Inbox while you figure out which pipeline the deal belongs in. There are different use cases for leads and deals in Pipedrive, and this is something you'll want to consider carefully when designing your sales map.

What are Deals?

Pipedrive deals are qualified sales opportunities. They're used to track the progress of your sales team's ongoing interactions with a person or organization as a deal moves through the stages of your pipeline.

The ultimate goal is to get a Won deal — one that has moved through the stages of your pipeline and where the customer ultimately decided to buy your product or service. At that point, the deal status is changed from Open (the default) to Won. Sometimes, as we all know, things fall through, and a deal may be marked as Lost. But a Lost deal isn't always a bad thing. By customizing your lost reasons, you can measure the volume of deals lost for reasons like “No response,” “Price too high,” or “Delivery time too long” — and tracking those reasons can help you make better business decisions down the line.

Using Deals in Pipedrive

A deal should be created in Pipedrive when the sales opportunity is pre-qualified in some way. That can mean you've communicated with them and they've shown some interest in your product or services. The sales pipeline consists of all your high-value, sales-ready deals.

Initially, a deal is placed in a pipeline stage and can be assigned a monetary value. Each deal has standard data fields, but you can also create customized deal detail fields to track information specific to your product or service. Those fields also let individuals on your team search and filter deals based on the criteria they choose.

Deals contain all the Pipedrive activities — everything that occurs in the process of closing a deal. Pipedrive activities could include phone calls, emails, tasks, meetings, proposals, deadlines, and more. Activities can also be created and completed on Organizations and People, but deals are the sales opportunities you're working to close, so activities are most often connected to deals.

As a deal progresses through the pipeline, more data gets recorded to monitor the relationship with the potential customer and reveal any weak spots in your pipeline.

What if a contact isn't ready to move forward? Or your sales team hasn't reached out to them yet?

If a sales opportunity isn't moving through the pipeline, but it's also not a lost deal, it's better to distinguish those opportunities as leads.

Converting Leads and Deals in Pipedrive

When a lead is ready to enter the sales pipeline, it can easily be converted into a deal.

Find the lead and then click Convert to Deal.

Now you can add information defining the new deal's pipeline, visibility, and value. Any information in the lead details will automatically populate the deal.

And it works the other way, too: Pipedrive deals can be converted into leads from your pipeline view, deal detail view, and deals list view.