We start by understanding how leads are handled today. We ask where leads are recorded, which tool or sheet is used, who updates it, how often and what statuses already exist. In many businesses the same status means different things to different people: “followed up” may mean one call or three. So we write a short status dictionary with a plain definition and a clear entry rule for each, such as new, attempted contact, in conversation, qualified, quotation sent, won, lost and on hold. We also define what makes a lead stuck, for example no activity for five working days in an early stage. Next we check the data. We look for missing owners, blank statuses, duplicate entries and dates in the wrong format, and clean what we can with your approval. Then we design the reports around the questions managers ask each morning and each week: how many new leads came in, how many have not been contacted, who has the most open leads, which leads are about to go stale and which are waiting for us rather than for the customer. We build a daily action view that lists leads needing attention, with name, source, last activity and owner. We build a weekly summary with counts by status, movement between statuses since last week and average time spent in each stage. We add a response-time view showing how long each new lead waited for a first contact, since speed often decides who wins. We add a lost-reason summary, built from a short mandatory field when a lead is closed; see lead conversion analysis. Depending on your tool, the report may be built inside the CRM, as a dashboard or as a sheet that reads from it; see CRM dashboard setup and CRM setup. We set up filters so each salesperson sees their own leads and managers see the whole team, and we respect user permissions; see user roles and permissions. We schedule delivery, for example a short email every morning and a fuller summary on Monday, and we link alerts for stuck leads; see automated follow-up reminders. We test with real data, compare counts against the source and fix mismatches before the team relies on it. We train the team on updating statuses promptly, reading their own view and what to do with a stuck lead. After a month we review which charts were used and which were ignored, and simplify. We cannot create information that is not recorded or force a team to update statuses, and numbers from two tools may differ slightly, but a clear, current status report makes missed follow-ups much harder to hide.
