Your first hour in the CRM

Everything in this CRM hangs off contacts, so that is where to start. The rest can wait until you need it.

1. Fill in your company details

Settings → Company Profile. Your name, address and phone appear on things your customers see, including the footer of emails you send from here.

2. Add a few contacts

Two ways in:

• Contacts → Add a contact for one at a time.
• Import from CSV if you already have a list. A spreadsheet with a column of names and a column of email addresses is enough — you match up the columns on the next screen.

Import a handful first rather than all two thousand. It takes a minute and it shows you whether your columns line up before you commit.

3. Set up your pipeline

Deals comes with stages already in it. Open it, see whether those stages match how you actually sell, and rename them if not. A pipeline that matches your real process gets used; one that does not gets ignored.

4. Connect your email

Settings → Email. Once connected you can send from a contact's page and their replies come back into Conversations, so the whole thread is on the record rather than in one person's inbox.

5. Invite your team

Settings → Team. Everyone gets their own login. A sales rep sees their own contacts and deals; an owner sees everyone's. Nobody shares a password.

What to do next

Open the Setup Checklist in the settings menu. It ticks itself off as you go, reading your actual data rather than asking you to mark things done.