Custom Lead Statuses, Tags and Row Colors

Your store has its own vocabulary for where a deal stands. The Leads view should speak it, and it should be readable from across the room.

Every CRM ships with a status list somebody else wrote. LeadLocate CRM ships with one too, and then lets your store add to it. Add Custom Status sits in the status dropdown of the Leads view, so a manager who wants a status called Waiting on Trade Payoff, Spouse Approval or Delivery Scheduled types it once and it is available on every lead for every user in the account. Statuses are per dealership, so a used car store's list looks nothing like a powersports store's, and neither has to live with the other's.

Tags are the second layer. A status is where a lead is; a tag is something true about it that does not change the stage. First time buyer, has a trade, wants a lease, Spanish speaking, referred by service. A lead can carry several tags at once and still have one status. Row colors are the third layer, and the fastest one: a click on the color dot in the row opens a palette of Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Teal, Blue and Maroon, and the row takes that color in the list. The Filter by Color button above the list then shows only the rows painted that color. A manager who tells the floor that red means call today needs no other training.

Underneath all three, keyword triggers let a store react to what a customer writes, and the Mark Lead As Lost popup gives a dead deal a reason rather than just a status. This page covers statuses, tags and colors; the lost reason feature has its own page.

A BDC manager at a franchise store runs her morning from the Leads view. She filters by color first: red rows are the leads she told the team to call before ten, and there are nine of them. Three are still red at 10:15, so she knows exactly which three reps to walk over to. She switches the filter to amber, which the store uses for customers who asked for a callback on a specific day, and confirms today's are on somebody's calendar.

At the desk, a salesperson moves a lead from the store's custom Appointment Set status to another custom status, Showed, when the customer walks in, and the lead's row changes with it. He tags the lead Has Trade because the customer mentioned a lease return on the phone, and later that week the used car manager filters by that tag to see every appraisal coming his way. When the customer decides to wait for the new model year, the rep sets the lead to Lost, the Mark Lead As Lost popup asks for a reason, and the reason lands on the lead where the GM will see it in the monthly review.

None of these people opened a settings page during the day. The statuses were added once by the manager, the colors mean what the store said they mean, and the tags accumulate as reps learn things about customers. That is the difference between a CRM the store configured and a CRM the store fights.

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Custom statuses are managed from the Leads view itself. The status dropdown at the top of the list shows All Leads and every status the store has, and Add Custom Status is right there in the dropdown, so adding one is done where the statuses are used rather than three menus away. Each lead's status is set from its row or its detail view, and the list filters by status so a rep can work one stage at a time.

Row colors are set from the color dot in each row's date cell, which opens the palette in place, and cleared by choosing the default. The Filter by Color button sits with the status dropdown and the search box above the list, so color, status and text search combine. The same row colors appear in the SMS inbox, so a conversation thread and its lead carry the same color and a rep moving between the two never loses the signal.

Tags are added from the lead and shown on it. Custom source feeds in Lead Feeds Manager have a Default Status for New Leads setting, which is how a store makes leads from a particular source land in a particular status the moment they are parsed, custom statuses included. On the phone app, reps see the same statuses on the same leads, so a status set on the lot is the status the desk sees.

The alternative to custom statuses is a workaround, and every store has one. The whiteboard by the tower with names in colored marker. The spreadsheet the BDC keeps because the CRM's statuses do not match the store's process. The note field where reps type WAITING ON PAYOFF in capitals because there is no status for it, which works until someone needs to filter by it. Each workaround is a second system of record, and the moment two systems disagree, the store trusts neither.

The cost shows up in three places. Managers spend their mornings reconciling the board with the CRM instead of coaching. Reports are wrong, because a lead that is really Delivery Scheduled is sitting in a generic Working status. And handoffs break: a rep covering for a colleague reads the CRM, sees a status that means nothing specific, and either calls a customer who was already sold or leaves alone a customer who was waiting. A status list in the store's own words fixes the handoff, because the covering rep reads Spouse Approval and knows exactly what to say.

Row colors replace the whiteboard for the thing a whiteboard is actually good at, which is being visible from across the room. A red row is a red name on the board, except it also filters, follows the lead into the inbox and is visible to the rep at home on the phone app. The reports dashboard covers what happens to the numbers once statuses mean what the store means.

A status is more useful when something happens because of it. Follow Up Processes in LeadLocate are multi step drips built per lead type, and a lead moving through statuses is the natural trigger for a step: the appointment reminder sequence for a lead in Appointment Set, the trade appraisal sequence for a lead tagged Has Trade, the re-engagement sequence for a lead set to a custom Waiting status. The Follow Up Process itself can also stamp a Lost Reason on the lead when a sequence ends without a sale, so the reporting on why deals die is fed by automation as well as by reps.

Keyword triggers add one more input. When a customer writes a word the store cares about, a trigger can act on it, which is how a store catches the customer who texts the word financing to a rep who is off that day. And Automated Templates sit at the front of all of this: the per feed first messages that go out under the assigned rep's name the moment a lead lands, before any status has changed. Statuses describe the pipeline; the automation around them is what makes the description worth keeping accurate.

Statuses and tags are also how a store keeps its promises to customers. A tag that says the customer asked for email only, or a custom status that says the customer asked to be contacted after the first of the month, is visible to every rep and every manager on the lead, which is what stops the well meaning rep from calling on the wrong day. A Lost status with a recorded reason ends the follow up sequence, so a customer who bought elsewhere is not still receiving appointment reminders.

For customers who ask not to be contacted at all, the answer is not a tag; it is the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides the contact from every CRM view rather than relying on a rep to read a label. The two work together. Tags and statuses carry the nuance of what a customer wants; the blacklist carries the hard stop. And because every call, text and email is written to one communications log on the lead, a manager reviewing a customer complaint sees the labels alongside the messages, which is the record a store wants when the question is whether it did what the customer asked.

Statuses, tags and row colors are on from the first day of the account. To add a status, open the Leads view, open the status dropdown, choose Add Custom Status, type the name and save; it is available to everyone in the account immediately. To color a row, click the color dot in the row and pick from the palette; to filter, use Filter by Color. To tag a lead, open it and add the tag. To make a source land in a status, open the custom source feed in Lead Feeds Manager and set Default Status for New Leads.

The one piece of advice worth giving is to decide what the colors mean before the floor starts using them, and to keep the custom status list short enough that reps use it. A store with forty statuses has a spreadsheet again. If your store wants something beyond the built in options, such as statuses with required fields or a color that changes automatically when a lead ages past a threshold, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe it.

Statuses are the pipeline; three other features give them consequences. Follow Up Processes put a drip behind each stage. Lost reason tracking turns the Lost status into a number the GM can act on. Lead notifications and alerts make sure the rep sees the lead whose row just turned red. And the In Store Now flag is the one status that matters most in the moment: who is physically on the lot right now.

Custom statuses, tags and row colors are part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only for a store that wants the software without lead delivery. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where they sit among everything else, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the Leads view they live in.

Can I add my own lead statuses in LeadLocate CRM?

Yes. Open the status dropdown in the Leads view and choose Add Custom Status. The new status is available on every lead for every user in your account, and the list filters by it like any built in status.

What colors can a lead row be?

Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Teal, Blue and Maroon, plus the default uncolored row. Click the color dot in the row to pick one, and use Filter by Color above the list to show only rows of that color. The same colors appear on the conversation in the SMS inbox.

What is the difference between a status and a tag?

A status is where the lead is in your process, and a lead has one at a time. A tag is something true about the lead, such as Has Trade or First Time Buyer, and a lead can carry several. Row color is a third, visual layer that filters the list.

Can leads from one source land in a specific status automatically?

Yes. Each custom source feed in Lead Feeds Manager has a Default Status for New Leads setting, and custom statuses are available there, so a source can drop its leads straight into the stage your store uses for it.

Do statuses show on the phone app?

Yes. The LeadLocate app shows the same leads with the same statuses, so a status changed on the lot is the status the desk sees, and the reverse.

Are custom statuses an extra cost?

No. Statuses, tags and row colors are part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page.

Custom statuses, tags and row colors are part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. See a pipeline labeled in your own words and readable from across the showroom.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.