Copper CRM Best Practices: How To Set Up Your CRM The Right Way From The Start

The secret sauce to setting up your Leads, People, Companies and Opportunities in your Copper CRM!

Whether I'm talking to new Copper users or long-term customers, I always find myself going back to the basics of how to use the Leads, People, Companies, and Opportunities section of Copper.

So 8 months after moving in with my girlfriend (now wife) and her overhearing me on numerous calls saying the same thing over and over, she has finally convinced me to write out a blog post explaining these basics. So if this helps you out, she says you can thank her! 💐

Alright, so here's my version of how I explain the Leads, People, Companies and Opportunities shindig in an 11 minute video. Make sure to also check out the article below for more detailed examples of best practices.

Leads (Cold Prospects)

What it is: A lead is a potential customer that is not ready to be sold to (aka they aren't a qualified lead).

Each company has a different qualification process. For us, if someone books a demo, they become qualified and we convert the lead into a Person, Company and Opportunity in our CRM (more on these below). If someone just emails us asking a few questions but aren't interested in chatting more, we simply keep them as a lead in the lead section.

More examples of when to use the leads section:

• Someone has signed-up to your newsletter, but hasn't expressed any interest yet in your products or services
• You made a list of businesses you think could be the right fit for your services and want somewhere to store their contact information
• You meet someone at a networking event and exchange business cards and want to keep their contact information in your CRM

In all these circumstances, you'll see the common theme is that you have your lead's contact information, but you're uncertain if there is actually a business opportunity there. You need to interact with them more to see if there is a spark ✨

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People (Warm Contacts) 👩🏾 👱🏼 👨🏼

What it is: Think of the People section as contacts who you'd like to keep in touch with. A good rule of thumb is, you should be able to go to your People section of your CRM and point to anyone and know exactly who they are (within reason). Let's dive in deeper!

Once you've had a conversation with your lead, you'll be faced with three options:

Option 1: Keep them as a lead

Use this when: There isn't a chance to sell them your product or service right now, nor do you have a reason to keep in touch with them on a regular basis.

Examples scenario: You cold called a business, but the owner said it's better to talk next Spring. You would leave them as a lead.

Option 2: Convert them to a Person/Company in your CRM

Use this when: There is no business opportunity or sales process necessary, but you'd like to keep in touch or regularly reference their contact details/conversation history.

Examples include: Vendors for your business that you have a relationship with but they will not go through your sales process.

Option 3: Convert them into an Opportunity (+Person & Company)

Use this when: They've expressed interest in your product or service and you want to take them through your sales process.

Examples include: When you've set up a meeting to talk further, or your prospect has booked a demo to learn more about your products or services.

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Companies

What it is: When converting a Lead into a Person, you'll also record the details of where they work (aka their company).

Here's an example on how Companies work in your CRM.

Say you're a marketing agency. Your client's name is Charlie, he owns a company called Chai Tea Lovers. You've had a great relationship over the past year, and you've just found out Charlie will be starting a second company called Matcha Brewing Company. He's loved working with you so much, that he wants to discuss about his new company hiring you but first he needs you to pitch his new team.

So do you see, Charlie is the same person, but now he's tied to two companies. Perhaps you meet three more people at Match Brewing Company, one of them whose name is Bianca. A year later, Bianca quits to work for another company called Coffee Co. You'll be able to track within Copper, at which company the initial relationship started, and also the network of colleagues associated to each company.

Where else does this come in handy? Say Coffee Co. reaches out and inquires about your services. Within your CRM you'll be able to quickly see that you know Bianca, who you've worked within the past, name drop and you'll already have a much richer relationship than you would have otherwise.

As an aside, keeping the People & Companies section of your CRM clean is essential. View it as your company's unique intellectual property, your team's shared brain.

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Opportunities (Hot Prospects/Clients/Onboarding):

What it is: Opportunity Pipelines are exactly what they sound like — Opportunities for your business! Though, they can also be so much more ⚡

Here's what you need to know about Opportunities:

1. Opportunity Pipelines are used to map out and manage processes within your business. Think about the stages your prospective clients need to go through before signing a deal with your business — each stage will be reflected in the opportunity pipeline within Copper.
   
   Here's an example of a basic sales process:
   Initial Meeting Booked → Proposal Sent → Agreement Signed/Won (Paid)
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2. You can have multiple pipelines for different parts of your business (e.g. sales process, onboarding, recruitment, etc)
   
   Here's an example of an onboarding process:
   Intake Form Received → Order Request Sent to Manufacturer → Order Ready For Shipment → Order Shipped → Order Received

Mapping out your processes in your pipeline takes time initially, but once you nail it you will save dozens on hours each week and you'll have a clear overview of how your prospects and clients are moving throughout your business.

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Projects

The projects section recently received a bit of an overhaul in Copper. You can use it to more granularly map out tasks that need to get done and manage them in a card view with sections (think Trello). That said, task management within Copper is a bit rough once the number of tasks start adding up across projects. We also like managing our onboarding/active projects in a more holistic way (moving the project itself through a process), which the project section unfortunately doesn't allow for in a nice board view.

In addition to that, your communication-focused tasks start intermingling with your project tasks and you don't have the most user-friendly view to easily manage and differentiate tasks to determine importance. Something that a standalone project management tool tends to do a better job with. Thus, leading to tasks getting ignored.

That said, we personally use a full-fledged project management tool to manage internal and client projects. (Asana is our preference). But depending on your internal processes, Copper's project section may work well — though we still recommend many of our clients to use the Opportunity section for projects/onboarding management, as you can use the stages as various points throughout the process, with each stage being a group of tasks that require to be completed, and a high-level project status overview across the company.

If you're using the projects section and it's been working well for your business, I'd love to check it out and learn more about how you've been using it. Always open to learning!

If you've been reading this article and found out you haven't quite set up up Copper this way (like for example, you've put all your leads in the people section 😬) I highly recommend taking a few days to clean it up. Setting up your CRM for success is essential for the growth of any business. I assure you—It's absolutely worth the time investment. ‍

Want our team to set up Copper for you and integrate it with the other tools you use in your business? Sign up for a free audit with our team here. ‍Haven't signed up for Copper yet? Use this link to try it for free.