Open the form
+ Add a lead sits in the Control Room header on every screen, so you never have to navigate somewhere first. The dialog opens with the cursor already in the business name.
A name to file it under. Type it, press Enter, and you have a saved lead. Everything below is optional in the sense that the form will let you skip it, and not optional in the sense that somebody has to go find it later.
A lot of good operators trade under their own name. There is no separate sign on the truck, no company on the invoice, just them. So the first field takes either: a business name, or the person's name when that is the business.
Two ways to handle it. Type their name straight into that field, or fill in their first and last name further down and tap use their name to copy it up. If you leave the field blank but give the person's name, the form files it under their name on its own and the confirmation tells you it did, so nobody goes hunting later for a business name that never existed.
The business
Five fields, and then a button that tries to fill them for you.
What to put in
Give whatever you have. The website is worth more than it looks: it is the only field that unlocks the audit, and it is what the lookup reads.
- Business name, or their own nameThe one thing the form needs. Exactly as they write it.
- WebsiteUnlocks the audit and powers the lookup below.
- Main phoneThe shop line, whoever picks up.
- Main emailThe general inbox, not the owner's personal one.
- LinkedInTheir profile or the company page, either is useful.
Then press Look them up and fill this in
It reads their website and fills what it finds. Two things make it safe to lean on: it only writes into fields you left blank, so it can never overwrite something you actually know, and nothing is saved until you press save. Treat it as a head start you confirm.
If it finds nothing it says so plainly rather than inventing something. If the lookup is unreachable it tells you that too, and your typing is still sitting there.
Who we talk to
The person, kept separate from the business. First and last name are two fields on purpose.
Why the name is split
A single name box gives you a string. Split, you get a first name, which is what an email opens with. "Hi Dana" reads like a person wrote it. "Hi Dana Whitfield" reads like a mail merge, because it is one. That difference is the entire reason for the extra box.
- First nameWhat outreach greets them by.
- Last nameKept apart so the greeting stays clean.
- Their titleOwner, GM, office manager. Tells the next rep who they are talking to.
- Their direct lineDifferent from the shop line. Keep both.
- Their emailThe one that reaches the person, not the front desk.
Where they are
Street, city, state and ZIP as four fields, not one line of text.
Split beats a single line every time
An address in one box is a string: you can read it and nothing else. Split into parts, the same information can sort a route, filter a market, group a territory, or hand a clean address to anything downstream. It takes the same ten seconds to type either way.
If the person's own mail goes somewhere else, open Their own address, if it is different and it gets its own block. Leave it closed when it is the same, which is most of the time.
Referred by, the one that decides credit
This is a picker now, not a text box, and the change is the whole point of the form.
- You typed a code from memory
- Nothing ever looked that code up
- It sat on the account as plain text
- ConnectClub never saw the lead at all
- A typo did not error, it quietly became a person's name
- Two groups: your teammates, and ConnectClub members
- Picking a member ties the lead to their actual record
- It appears under their card in the ConnectClub tab
- It counts toward what they are owed when it connects
- Nothing to spell, so nothing to misspell
The picker has a Someone else option with a free-text box, and it exists for a real case: a walk-in referral from someone who is not a member yet. Use it for that. Do not use it to type a name that is already in the list, because a typed name is back to being a string that nothing can resolve.
If the person genuinely should be in the list and is not, they have not joined ConnectClub yet. That is worth fixing at the source rather than working around here.
Assign it, then save
A lead should never land unowned, so the form pre-picks whoever's book you are currently looking at. Change it if the referral belongs to someone else.
Two ways to finish
Save and run the audit saves, opens their page, and reads their site on the spot, so you land on a built-out account instead of a blank one. It needs a website, which is why the button stays greyed out until you give it one.
Just save for now files it and returns you to where you were. Use it when you are logging three referrals in a row and want to work them later.
What one save actually writes
Worth knowing, because it is what the fields you filled in are for.
| Where it lands | What shows up there |
|---|---|
| Your pipeline | The account, warm, assigned to the rep you chose, with a Referred by row carrying the name and a gold code chip. |
| The ConnectClub tab | The lead listed under that member's card, status submitted, with a live status dropdown. |
| The member's record | The link between the two, which is what a commission is calculated from once the deal connects. |
| The account page | Everything else you typed: contact, direct line, address parts, LinkedIn, title. |
Then you only ever change one thing
The status, on their card in ConnectClub: submitted, contacted, engaged, demo, proposal, connected, lost. Contacted, connected and lost each stamp their own date automatically, so the timeline stays honest without anyone keeping notes. Connected is the one that makes it commissionable.
A referral can also arrive on its own. Send a ConnectClub member's link, cobbledworks.com/refer/start/?ref=THEIR-CODE, and when the owner registers on it the same three records get written without anyone touching this form. Use the link when the member is doing the introducing, and this form when the referral reaches you directly.