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Sales & CRM
Do not let a good enquiry go quiet.
Keep the enquiries and tenders you’re chasing somewhere other than one person’s inbox.
Overview
An enquiry comes in.
A lead in WorkGuru is a possible sales opportunity or a tender. You create one when something real turns up, and the lead tracker holds it along with the activity against it — who you spoke to, what was said, and what’s meant to happen next.
How much you record is your call. Some businesses log every call and email; others put in almost nothing until it’s worth pricing. Both are legitimate uses. The lead tracker exists to stop opportunities being lost, not to impose a sales methodology on a business that doesn’t want one.
Leads can be assigned, so there’s an owner for each one and it’s obvious who’s meant to be chasing what. That’s usually the fix for the most common failure: an enquiry that everybody assumed somebody else was handling.
When a lead is won it converts directly into a Project or a Stock Sale. The information you gathered while selling it carries across, so nobody re-keys the job on day one.
What’s inside
What you get
01
Lead records
Keep the opportunity visible.
02
Ownership
Make it clear who is handling it.
03
Client and contact links
Keep the enquiry connected to the people asking.
04
Quote connection
Turn the opportunity into a quote.
05
Status tracking
Know where the lead is at.
06
Activity/history
Keep useful context as the conversation develops.
The reality
Why you need it
The enquiry lands in a shared inbox.
Where it is simultaneously everybody’s and nobody’s. Shared inboxes are where enquiries go to be assumed handled, and the failure is silent — you never find out about the ones nobody answered.
You need more information before you can quote.
So the enquiry sits in a state that isn’t quite anything: not lost, not quoted, not obviously anyone’s. That’s exactly the state leads disappear from, because there’s no next action attached to it.
Someone spoke to the customer yesterday.
And you don’t know what was said, so you either ring the colleague or ring the customer and repeat a conversation they’ve already had. The second is worse — it tells the customer you aren’t organised.
You are busy with current jobs.
Which is when pipeline work stops, and it’s exactly the wrong time. The quiet period in three months is created by the follow-ups nobody did while the workshop was full.
How it works
How it works
01
Create the lead
02
Give it an owner
03
Keep the details together
04
Build the quote when it is ready
05
Close it properly
Capabilities
What it does
Capability
Lead records
A lead is a possible sales opportunity or a tender. Creating one gives the enquiry somewhere to live other than an inbox, and how much detail you put in is your call — some businesses log every call, others record almost nothing until it’s worth pricing.
Capability
Ownership
Every lead has somebody responsible. This is usually the fix for the most common failure in a small sales operation: the enquiry everybody assumed somebody else was following up. It also makes cover possible when that person is away.
Capability
Client and contact links
Leads from existing customers connect to the client record, so the opportunity sits alongside the work you’ve already done for them. What you quote a long-standing customer is usually informed by how the last three jobs went.
Quote connection
The lead is the opportunity; the quote is the priced document against it. Keeping them linked is what lets you distinguish work you’re talking about from work you’ve actually put a number on — a distinction that matters when you’re planning capacity.
Status tracking
Where each opportunity has got to, including closing the ones you’ve lost. A pipeline that only ever grows isn’t telling you anything, and closing lost leads honestly is what keeps the rest of the list worth reading.
Activity/history
What was said and when. Mostly valuable at handover — when somebody else picks the customer up and needs to know what’s already been discussed without ringing to ask.
Day to day
What it looks like on a normal day
Three enquiries arrive on Monday.
Give each one an owner instead of leaving all three in the inbox.
A customer needs to send drawings before you can quote.
Keep the lead open while you wait instead of forgetting about it.
A lead is clearly not a fit.
Close it and move on rather than carrying dead opportunities forever.
The customer says yes.
Move the won opportunity through toward the quote/job workflow.
What you get out of it
What changes
Stop enquiries disappearing.
Give every opportunity somewhere to live.
Know who owns the next step.
Make responsibility clear.
Keep the future workload visible.
See the work that may be coming before it becomes a project.
Spend less time rebuilding context.
Keep the customer conversation with the lead.
Make quoting easier to pick up.
Start with the information already gathered.
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Discovered their contract work wasn’t profitable.
We didn’t wanna pay 100 grand upfront for a program – but then we found WorkGuru.
Nick Mazzella, Administrator, Frontline Trays & Trailers
Fit
Will it work the way we do things?
“Most enquiries come straight to the owner.”
That’s extremely common, and it works until the owner is on site, at a supplier, or away for a week. Recording the enquiry doesn’t change who handles it — it means the business can see what’s been promised when that person isn’t available to ask.
“We quote almost everything straight away.”
Then your leads are short-lived, and that’s fine. Even a lead that becomes a quote within a day is worth recording, because it gives you a record of what came in and what happened to it. Over a year, knowing how much you quoted and how much you won is one of the more useful numbers you have.
“We do not want a complicated sales process.”
Then don’t build one. A lead can hold nothing more than who it’s from and what they want. Nothing forces stages, activity logging or forecasting. The minimum useful version is a list of what’s out and who owns it.
By trade
Where this gets used
Works with
Connected features
CRM
Keep the lead with the wider customer history.
Contact Management
Know who you are actually dealing with.
Sales Pipeline
See leads across the whole sales workload.
Quoting
Turn the opportunity into a price.
Automations
Automate reminders and assignment where it makes sense.
FAQs
Lead Management questions
Can a lead be linked to an existing client?
Yes. Leads from existing customers connect to the client record, so the opportunity sits alongside the work you’ve already done for them. That context tends to matter — what you quote a long-standing customer is often informed by how the last three jobs went.
Does every lead have to become a quote?
No. Plenty of leads are lost, withdrawn or never worth pricing, and closing them off is part of keeping the list meaningful. A pipeline that only ever grows isn’t telling you anything.
Can leads be assigned to someone?
Yes. Assigning a lead gives it an owner, which is usually the difference between an enquiry being chased and an enquiry being assumed handled. It also means that when someone’s away, you can see what was theirs.
Can a lead move into quoting?
Yes. A lead can progress to a quote, and when it’s won it converts into a Project or a Stock Sale with the detail carried across. That’s what avoids the job being typed into the system a second time once it’s actually sold.
Give every enquiry a next step.
Bring us the way leads arrive today and we will show you how to keep them moving in WorkGuru.