CRM for small business: how to never lose a single lead

A CRM for small business is needed first of all so that you don't lose leads. An online school runs ads and gets requests from everywhere: website forms, calls, Telegram, WhatsApp, AI bot replies. If the requests are scattered across email and messengers, the manager calls back the next day. By then, the client has already paid for a course at another school.

A CRM is a system that collects all inquiries into one list by itself. Each inquiry becomes a lead — that's what a CRM calls any request. A lead has an owner, a funnel stage (a step of the sale, such as “New lead” or “Meeting”) and its whole history in the customer profile in CRM. The head of sales sees where requests get stuck, and the manager sees who to call right now.

Telephony, AI bots, a website widget, messengers and analytics are already built into your account. So requests land in the CRM by themselves, with no third-party integrations. The CRM itself — fields, funnels, leads — works on any plan, while AI bots, the widget, lead capture from the website and end-to-end analytics come with the “CRM + Telephony + Automation” plan and above, with no extra fees or separate services.

Watch the two-and-a-half-minute video, and below you'll find the step-by-step setup.

Why a small business needs a CRM

• An online school: a manager opens their own “My new leads” view and calls in order. The “Missed calls” filter shows who has already tried to get through. Requests don't go cold while waiting for a call.
• Real estate and B2B: deals are long, with many touchpoints. The “Nearest task” → “Overdue” condition finds the clients someone forgot to call back in a second.
• A salon, clinic or renovation business: the kanban shows how many clients are at each stage and how much they have already paid. The owner sees the workload and the money without reports from managers, even on a phone: the account works well there too.
• Head of sales: a manager quit — select their leads by the “Responsible” condition and hand them over to someone else in one operation. Clients aren't left without attention.
• Marketer: select those who didn't buy (“Payment” → “No”) and send them an SMS or an email right from the list. No separate mailing service needed.

How the list of leads and deals works

Each inquiry becomes a lead. As soon as a payment is added to the lead card, the lead becomes a deal — more in the article on payment tracking in CRM. That's why the CRM has two lists: “All leads and deals” and “Only deals”.

You can view the list in two ways:

• kanban — a board with a column for each funnel stage, with the number of leads and the payment total in the column header;
• table — columns with card fields, sorting and editing right in the cell.

The kanban columns are the stages you define yourself: how to set them up is covered in the article on CRM pipeline stages.

On the left is the views column. A view is a saved filter together with its sorting and columns. Each view shows its number of records. The list and the numbers refresh by themselves once a minute.

How to set up the lead list in CRM

1. 1
   Open the list

   The “Leads” menu item. The kanban opens by default. The “Table” and “Kanban” icons are in the panel above the list, and your choice is remembered.
2. 2
   Find a lead

   Type a name, phone number or email into the “Search and filter” field, at least three characters. The list updates by itself.
3. 3
   Set conditions

   Click the “Search and filter” field and choose a condition on the left, for example “Funnel stage”. Tick the values on the right and click “Find”.
4. 4
   Save a view

   Click “+ Save filter”, enter the “Name”, choose the “Colour” and “Who sees it”: “Shared” or “Mine”. Then click “Save filter”.
5. 5
   Set up the table columns

   In table mode, hover over a column header and click “⋮” → “Columns”. Width, order and sorting are saved to the current view automatically.
6. 6
   Show fields on the kanban card

   In kanban mode, click “⋯” → “Kanban card” → “Add a field”. Choose up to four fields, set their look and color, and click “Save”.

How to stop losing leads: a “who to handle now” filter

The most useful conditions:

• “Stage date” or “Nearest task” → “Overdue” — forgotten clients;
• “Missed calls” or “Unread messages” → “Yes” — who is waiting for a reply;
• “Payment” → “No” — leads without a payment;
• “Source” → one source → “Campaign” — requests from a specific ad;
• your own card fields: lists, numbers and dates.

The “Not equal” button excludes the selected values. To remove all conditions, click the cross on the “Filters: N” badge or the “Reset” button.

Kanban board for leads: move leads with the mouse

Drag a card to another column — the stage changes and is saved by itself. While you drag, the “Rejected”, “Deal closed” and “Delete” zones appear at the bottom of the screen. The “Add a lead” button at the bottom of a column creates a lead right at that stage.

A pink stripe on the left of a card means the last call was missed. A field with the “Signal” look highlights what matters with a bright badge, for example “VIP client”.

Bulk actions with the lead list

Tick leads, and a panel with the “Stage”, “Responsible”, “Export”, “More” and “Delete” buttons appears at the bottom. The “Select all” link takes all records matching the filter, not just those on the screen. “More” has a category change and SMS and email broadcasts. An SMS costs from $0.0748 depending on the carrier, and Beeline and MegaFon have their own rates.

Before making a change, the system asks you to type a short phrase, for example “change 25 leads”. This protects against an accidental click. The progress of the operation is shown in a card in the account header.

Read also: Customer profile in CRM: full history, client replies and tasks, CRM pipeline stages: set up your sales funnel and client alerts, Import contacts from Excel to CRM without manual data entry, Customer segmentation in crm, Export crm data to excel, Lead distribution in crm