How to Manage Prospects and Build a Pipeline with NextCrew

A prospect is a client you haven't won yet. NextCrew tracks them in the same place as your real clients, so the company you're chasing in March is the same record you're invoicing in June — with every call, note and promise still attached.

No separate sales tool. No spreadsheet that only one person updates. The work is in three habits: keep the statuses honest, write the note, set the task.

That is one prospect properly recorded. Everything below is for building the views you will live in, and for handing a deal over once you win it.

Who this applies to

• Whoever sells — owner, business development, account managers. In most agencies that's two or three people and no formal sales team.
• Administrators — the picklists in the next section are yours to set, and everyone else lives with what you choose.

Set up your lists once

Pipeline tracking is only as good as the dropdowns behind it. Five lists do the work, and all five are yours to change — they live in Code Tables, NextCrew's name for the lookup lists that fill dropdowns across the product.

Spend twenty minutes here before you add a single prospect. Changing a list later is easy; changing it after four hundred records are using it is not.

Two things to know before you edit a list

Deactivate rather than delete. Deactivating a value keeps it on the records that already use it, so your history stays readable, but takes it out of the dropdown for anything new. Deleting a value in use is what breaks saved views.

Renaming affects saved views. Rename a status your team filters on and those saved views stop matching. Tell people before you do it.

Full detail on each: Manage Lead Sources · Lead Status · Follow Up Statuses · Client Account Types · Line of Business · Code Tables overview

If a dropdown is missing what you need → A dropdown is missing the option I need

Steps

Step 1: Add the prospect as a client

Go to CRM > Clients and add the company, same as any client. Set Account Type to Prospect.

That one field is what separates your pipeline from your book of business. Everything else about the record is identical — which is the point. When you win them, nothing is re-keyed.

Set the Lead Source while you still remember it. Nobody can reconstruct where a lead came from three months later, and without it you can't tell which of your channels is worth the money.

Full detail: How to Add a New Client in NextCrew.

Step 2: Add the people

A company doesn't sign anything. People do.

Add each person you deal with from the Contacts panel on the prospect's Overview tab. Fill in their Title properly — six months from now it's how you tell three names at the same company apart.

Full detail: Managing and Adding Client Contacts.

Step 3: Give it an owner and a status

Three fields, thirty seconds, and they're what make the pipeline readable by anyone other than you.

• Assigned To — who owns this. An unowned prospect is nobody's problem.
• Lead Status — where the deal is.
• Line of Business — which part of your business would serve them. Feeds your reporting later.

Step 4: Write the note

Do this straight after the call, not at the end of the week.

Open the prospect and click Add Note. Notes are dated and attributed, so the record builds itself into a history of the relationship. Write what they actually said — what they're unhappy about with their current agency, what the decision timeline is, who else has to approve it.

Give the note a Category. Call Log, Meeting Notes, Proposal/Quote and the rest exist so you can find one kind of note later without reading all of them.

Save the ones you write over and over

At the top of the note panel there's a template dropdown and a Save control. Write a note once — the discovery-call structure you always use — and save it as a template. Turn on Shared and the whole team gets it.

The point isn't the typing you save. It's that everyone's call notes come out in the same shape, which is what makes them searchable a year later.

Full detail: Mastering Notes and Templates · Note Categories

Step 5: Set the task before you close the record

The note says what happened. The task says what happens next. A prospect with a note and no task is a deal you're relying on memory for.

Two ways in:

• From the prospect — the + (Add) button on the right of the record, then Add Task. The prospect is linked for you.
• From the Tasks section in the main menu — Create New Task, and you link the record yourself.

Then fill in what makes it findable: Priority, Due Date, Category, who it's delegated to, and who can see it.

Full detail: Task Management — Manage a task · Managing Task Categories

If this isn't working → A task went unnoticed

Build the view you'll live in

Everything above is data entry. This is the part that turns it into a pipeline.

A view is the client list, filtered and arranged how you want it, saved under a name. Open it tomorrow and it rebuilds itself against whatever the data says now.

Making one

1. Open CRM > Clients and filter it — start with Account Type = Prospect.
2. Use the cog icon at the top right to turn on the columns you actually want: Lead Status, Follow Up Status, Assigned To, Line of Business.
3. Drag a column header into the grouping area above the list to group by it. Grouping by Lead Status gives you a board of your pipeline by stage.
4. Click Save View at the top and name it.

Three worth building

• My pipeline — Account Type = Prospect, Assigned To = you, grouped by Lead Status. The one you open every morning.
• Owes a follow-up — filtered by the Follow Up Statuses that mean the ball is in your court. This is your call list, and it maintains itself.
• The whole team's pipeline — Account Type = Prospect, grouped by Assigned To. What you put on the screen in the Monday meeting.

Then use it

It sticks on its own. NextCrew remembers the last view you used and opens on it next time. Pick your pipeline view once and that's the screen you get, instead of every client you've ever had. Nothing to set, and it's per person — your default isn't anyone else's.

Share it. Saving and sharing are separate steps. Once saved, click Share, pick the person, and choose whether they get it view-only or editable.

Export it with the Export to Excel icon at the top right. What you see is what you get — your columns, your order, your filters. Useful for a board pack, useless as a habit.

Full detail: Your Data, Your Way: list, view and filters · Exporting lists to Excel

If this isn't working → A prospect isn't showing in my pipeline view

Turning a prospect into a client

You won it. Change the Account Type from Prospect to the live value, and update the Lead Status to Won.

That's the whole conversion. Everything carries over — the contacts, every note, the history of who said what. Nothing is re-entered, and the account manager who inherits them can read the entire courtship.

Then the setup work starts: rates, portal access for their people, parent and child structure if they have sites. Those have their own guides, linked below.

If it's not working

A prospect isn't showing in my pipeline view

Also asked as: my prospect disappeared · the pipeline view is missing companies · I added a prospect and can't find it · the list is empty

Check 1 — Is the Account Type actually set to Prospect?
This is the filter the whole view hangs on, and it's easy to miss when you're adding a company quickly.

• It's blank or set to something else → set it. Fixed.
• It's right → Check 2.

Check 2 — Does your view filter on Assigned To?
A "my pipeline" view only shows what's assigned to you. A prospect someone else owns, or one with no owner at all, won't appear.

• Assigned To is empty or someone else → that's why. Assign it. Fixed.
• It's assigned to you → Check 3.

Check 3 — Was a status renamed?
If your view filters on a Lead Status or Follow Up Status that an admin has since renamed, the filter no longer matches and records quietly drop out.

• The value in your filter no longer exists → rebuild the filter and save the view again. Fixed.
• Everything looks right and it's still missing → Escalate with the company name, your view name, and the filters it uses.

A dropdown is missing the option I need

Also asked as: how do I add a follow up status · the lead source list doesn't have what I need · can I change the pipeline stages · where do I edit the dropdowns

Check 1 — Are you an admin?
Code tables are admin-only. Everyone else picks from what's there.

• You're not → ask an admin to add the value. It takes them a minute. Fixed.
• You are → Check 2.

Check 2 — Is the value there but deactivated?
A deactivated value stays on old records but disappears from the dropdown.

• It's deactivated → reactivate it rather than creating a duplicate. Two values meaning the same thing is how reporting goes wrong. Fixed.
• It genuinely isn't there → add it. Check the order field so it lands where people expect in the list.

A task went unnoticed

Also asked as: nobody actioned the task · I never got a reminder · the task isn't in my list · who is this task assigned to

Check 1 — Does it have a due date?
Reminders run off due dates. A task without one sits in the list indefinitely and chases nobody.

• No due date → that's the answer. Add one. Fixed.
• It has one → Check 2.

Check 2 — Who is it assigned to?
Tasks have one owner. If it was created from the Tasks section rather than from the record, it may have defaulted to whoever made it.

• Assigned to the wrong person → reassign it. Fixed.
• Assigned correctly but they can't see it → check the viewing permission on the task. Restricting who can see a task also hides it from people you expected to have it.

How to know it's complete

For each prospect:

• ✅ Account Type is Prospect, and Lead Source is filled in
• ✅ At least one contact, with a real job title
• ✅ Assigned To is a person, not blank
• ✅ Lead Status reflects where the deal actually is, not where it was in March
• ✅ There's a note from the last conversation
• ✅ There's an open task with a due date

For the setup:

• ✅ The five lists say what your team actually says out loud
• ✅ You have a saved view you open without thinking about it
• ✅ Someone other than you could open the pipeline view and know what's going on

Best practices

Log the lead source every single time. It's the only way to find out which of your channels actually pays, and it can't be reconstructed later.

Keep follow-up statuses short and action-shaped. "Send proposal" tells you what to do. "In progress" tells you nothing.

Note and task before you leave the record. Both take under a minute while the call is fresh. Neither happens if you save them for Friday.

Put the shared pipeline view on the screen in your weekly meeting. Nothing improves data quality faster than the whole team looking at it together.

Write the note for whoever inherits the account. One day someone will, and the notes are the only thing that survives the handover.

Related articles

• How to Add a New Client in NextCrew — the full client record, field by field
• Managing and Adding Client Contacts — the people at a prospect, and their own follow-up statuses
• Your Data, Your Way: list, view and filters — grouping, columns, sharing and default views in full
• Task Management — Manage a task — every field on a task
• Task Dashboard — seeing the team's workload in one place
• Mastering Notes and Templates — note templates and the Shared toggle
• Guide to Managing Follow Up Statuses — changing the follow-up list
• Lead Status — your pipeline stages
• Manage Lead Sources — where leads come from
• Line of Business — segmenting clients by service area
• How to Configure Client Rate Tables — the first job after you win them
• Set Up Client Portal Access — giving your new client their own login

FAQ

Q: Can I keep prospects and clients apart?
A: Yes — filter on Account Type. Most people save that filter as a view so the two never mix on screen.

Q: What's the difference between Lead Status and Follow Up Status?
A: Lead Status is where the deal is. Follow Up Status is what you owe them next. A deal can sit at the same Lead Status for weeks while the follow-up changes repeatedly.

Q: Do I lose anything when a prospect becomes a client?
A: No. It's the same record with the Account Type changed. Contacts, notes and history all stay.

Q: Can two people work the same prospect?
A: Yes, but one person is Assigned To. Tasks also have a single owner by design. Shared responsibility is how follow-ups get dropped.

Q: Can I change the pipeline stages to match how we sell?
A: Yes. Lead Status is a code table an admin can edit. So are lead sources and follow-up statuses.

Q: We already use another CRM. Can we still use this?
A: You can — but pick one as the source of truth and stick to it. A pipeline maintained in two places is a pipeline maintained in neither.

Q: Can a client contact see the notes I write about them?
A: No. Notes are internal, including for contacts with a portal login.

Q: What if I forget a follow-up?
A: Tasks with due dates generate reminders. A task without a due date won't chase you, which is the usual reason one gets missed.