Understanding Leads and the Pipeline in Pulse

A lead in Pulse is a prospective client record — a company or individual you are working to convert into a paying client. Each lead moves through a fixed set of pipeline stages as your team works it from first contact to a decision.

What a lead record holds

A lead can store a large amount of information. The key fields are:

• Company name (required), industry, website URL
• Contact person — the named individual at the company
• Email, phone, address
• Source — how the lead was found (manual entry, Google Maps, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Deal type — one-off project or recurring retainer
• Service type and estimated value
• Priority — Urgent, High, Medium, or Low (set automatically from the lead score, but can be updated)
• Pipeline status — the current stage
• Notes

Leads also have a contacts sub-list where multiple people at the same company can be stored, useful when enrichment finds additional contacts beyond the initial contact person.

The seven pipeline stages

Every lead passes through seven fixed stages in this order:

1. New — the lead has been added but no outreach has happened.
2. First Contact — you have reached out once.
3. Discovery — you are in active conversation and learning about their needs.
4. Proposal Sent — a proposal or quote has been sent. Logging a "Proposal sent" activity automatically advances the lead to this stage if it is not already here.
5. Negotiation — you are working through terms, pricing, or scope.
6. Won — the lead accepted. Conversion to client happens from this stage.
7. Lost — the lead did not convert. Keep the record for future re-engagement.

Stage changes are manual except for the Proposal Sent rule mentioned above. Move a lead to the next stage by updating its pipeline status from the lead card or detail view.

List view and sorting

The Leads page supports a card view and a table view. The default sort is newest first, with priority (Urgent before Low) and score as tiebreakers. You can also sort by score, company name, stage, email sent count, email opened count, and engagement signals from enrichment.

Stage filter pills let you quickly narrow the list to a single stage. Additional filters include source, priority, assigned team member, deal type, email engagement status (opened, unopened, hot), and date added range.

Discovery call booking

A lead record has a discovery call date and time field. Setting it creates a calendar event in the Pulse calendar so the call appears alongside milestones and project deadlines without any extra setup.