Creating a new lead

Working with leads in NutshellIn Nutshell, your sales are tracked as leads through the entire pipeline. There's no separate distinction between leads vs. opportunities (see this post from our CEO for more on that decision). Take a look at the video on the right, or follow the instructions below, for the basics of creating a lead in Nutshell.

Start a new lead using the orange Create new… dropdown at the top of every page in Nutshell.

Add an account

Accounts represent companies that you'll be working with. You can create an account, even if you just know the name. As you type, Nutshell checks for any duplicates that already exist. In the purple card, you can also add a company's location or URL. After you fill out the information you know, press enter or click Create.

If you have additional information to add to the account, click the new purple card and add the information to the popup dialog that appears.

Add a contact

Contacts represent specific individuals relevant to this lead. You can type-to-find an existing contact, or create a new contact in the card. Note that if you have added an account, Nutshell will prompt you to associate them with each other. After you've created the card, you can also add a small note to the contact for this lead.

Products & competitors

You can add products and competitors to a lead when you create it or at any other time. You can specify a non-standard price for the product, or set pricing for a service.

Competitors can be created on-the-fly for use in reporting.

Sources

You can also choose to add any of the sources that you've defined to this new lead. Use them with Nutshell's great built-in reports. Note that you can't create new sources from a lead -- that's handled by administrators from the Setup section.

Assignment

By default, the lead will follow the rules you've defined for assignment to the correct team or user. You can also choose to assign the lead to yourself, or a specific team member. Read more about defining lead assignment rules.

If you have any additional questions for Nutshell please contact us and we'll be in touch!