Sales & marketing

Leads & Sales CRM

6 min readUpdated

What it does

Tracks the people and companies you're selling to, partnering with, or otherwise want to convert. You organize them into pipelines (one per sales process, partnership track, or campaign), drag them through customizable stages, and see live numbers on pipeline value, win rates, and team performance.

This is the sales CRM — it's separate from the Investor CRM, which is for tracking investors and fundraising conversations. Use this for customers, partners, and any other commercial leads.

Who can use it

  • Anyone in your organization with read permission for the Leads module.
  • Creating, editing, and deleting needs the matching permission. Without it, the Create Pipeline and Create Lead buttons are disabled.
  • You must verify your email before you can create your first pipeline.

Where to find it

From the sidebar, open Marketing and click Leads & CRM.

Step by step

Create a sales pipeline

A pipeline is a single sales process — for example, "Enterprise Sales", "Series A Round 2025", or "Partnership Opportunities".

  1. On the Lead Pipelines page, click Create Pipeline in the top-right.
  2. Fill in the dialog:
    • Pipeline Name — for example, "Enterprise Sales Q1".
    • Description — what this pipeline tracks.
    • Default Pipeline — toggle on if new leads should land here automatically.
    • Shared Access — pick team members who can see and update leads in this pipeline.
  3. Click Create Pipeline. Nautis adds a default set of stages (you can change them later).
Step by step

Open a pipeline and add leads

  1. From the Lead Pipelines page, click a pipeline card to open it.
  2. Inside, you see a Kanban board: one column per stage, leads as cards.
  3. Click New Lead in the header (or Create Lead on the empty state).

In the Create New Lead dialog:

  • Lead Type — choose Individual (a single person) or Company (an organization with one or more contacts).
  • Company Name (companies only) — for example, "Acme Corp".
  • Contacts — for an individual, this is the person you're selling to. For a company, add each person you talk to, mark one as the primary contact, and include name, email, phone, and role.
  • Deal Value and Currency — how much this deal is worth.
  • Priority — Low, Medium, High, or Urgent.
  • Expected Close Date — when you expect to win or lose this deal.
  • Description — context about the deal.
  • Source — Website, Referral, LinkedIn, Cold Call, Cold Email, Event / Conference, Partner, Social Media, Advertisement, Inbound, or Other.
  • Tags — comma-separated labels like enterprise, urgent, Q1.

Click Create Lead. The card appears in your first stage.

Step by step

Move a lead through stages

  • On the Kanban board: drag a card from one stage to the next.
  • From the lead details: click the card, then change the stage in the right-hand panel.

When you drop a card into a Closed Won or Closed Lost stage, Nautis updates the lead's status and rolls the value into your won/lost metrics.

Step by step

Customize your stages

  1. Open the pipeline.
  2. Open the manage-stages dialog from the pipeline actions menu (or the Manage Pipeline Stages button in the header).
  3. To add a stage, type a name (for example, "Qualification" or "Proposal"), tick Closed Won or Closed Lost if it's a final state, then click Add.
  4. To edit a stage, click the pencil icon next to it. To delete, use the trash icon — you'll get a confirmation prompt.
  5. Drag stages to reorder them. The Kanban board updates immediately.

Every pipeline can have its own stages, so a sales pipeline and a partnership pipeline don't have to share the same flow.

Step by step

Work a lead in detail

Click any lead card to open the full detail view. It has six tabs:

  • Details — name, value, contacts, source, priority, expected close date, tags, custom fields. Edit anything inline.
  • Notes — your private notes about the deal.
  • Activity — a timestamped log of everything that's happened to this lead.
  • Meetings — schedule or log calls and meetings with this lead.
  • Comments — discussion threads with your team about this lead.
  • Files — attach proposals, contracts, decks, or anything else.

Use Edit to change top-level fields, Delete to remove the lead.

Step by step

Search, filter, and bulk-edit

  1. On the pipeline page, use the search bar to find leads by name, contact, or description.
  2. Click Filters to narrow by Status, Priority, or Source.
  3. Tick the checkboxes on multiple cards (or rows in the table view) to select them, then use the bulk-action menu to move, delete, or change them all at once.

Switch between Kanban and Table view using the toggle in the toolbar.

Step by step

Read pipeline metrics

Open the sidebar with the Overview toggle to see:

  • Total — how many leads are in the pipeline right now.
  • Active — leads not yet won or lost.
  • Won — leads in any Closed Won stage.
  • Value — total pipeline value in USD (Nautis converts other currencies for you).
  • Forecast Panel — projected close dates and revenue.
  • Sales Leaderboard — which team members closed the most this period.

You also get a Win/Loss Analysis view and Advanced Currency Analytics to compare deals across currencies.

Step by step

Automate your pipeline

  1. From the pipeline page, open the Automation Rules panel.
  2. Add a rule — for example, "When a lead moves to Negotiation, set priority to High."
  3. Save. The rule fires every time the trigger condition is met.

Use rules to assign leads, send reminders, and update fields without manual work.

Tips & limits

  • Your plan caps how many leads you can create each month. When you hit the limit, Create Lead opens a "Lead Limit Reached" modal — upgrade your plan to add more.
  • Mark one pipeline as Default so new leads land somewhere sensible if you forget to pick.
  • For companies, the first contact you add is the primary contact. You can change that later from the lead detail view.
  • The currency picker supports many currencies; Nautis converts everything to USD for the pipeline totals.
  • Custom fields let you track anything Nautis doesn't show by default (industry, budget tier, etc.). Set them up from a lead's Details tab.

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from the Investor CRM?

The Investor CRM is for fundraising — it tracks investors, their funds, term sheets, and outreach. This Leads CRM is for everything commercial — customers, partners, channel deals, anything where you're trying to convert someone.

Can I have more than one pipeline?

Yes, and you should. Create one for each sales process, region, or product line so the stages can be different. One pipeline can be your default.

Why can't I drag a card?

Either you don't have update permission, or the lead is locked (for example, already marked as Closed Won). Check the tooltip on the card.

Can I import existing leads from a spreadsheet?

Yes — use the import option in the pipeline actions menu. Map your columns to lead fields and Nautis creates the leads in bulk.

Who can see my pipeline?

You, anyone you added in Shared Access when creating the pipeline, and anyone with the Leads module permissions in your organization.

Does deleting a lead delete its contacts?

No. Contacts live in your Contacts module — deleting a lead just removes the link.

Can I export my pipeline?

Yes. Switch to the table view, select the rows you want, and use the export menu to download as CSV.

Still need help?

Our team answers every message. Already a customer? Open a support ticket from inside Nautis.