Tracking Leads and Growing Your Business with the HomeWatcher CRM

Every home watch business runs on new inquiries, and the ones that grow fastest are the ones that never let a prospect slip through the cracks. The Leads section in HomeWatcher is a built-in CRM, so you can capture, track, and follow up with prospective customers in the same app you already use to run your visits. No more juggling a spreadsheet, your inbox, and a sticky note on your monitor.

A lead is a prospective customer. Each one moves through a five-stage pipeline: New, Contacted, Quote Sent, Won, and Lost. This guide shows you how to add a lead, work it through the pipeline, log your conversations, and turn a won lead into a paying client and property with a single click.

How to add a lead

1. Open the Leads section and click Add Lead in the top right.
2. Enter the lead's Name and Email (both required), plus any optional details you have: phone, property city and state, source, an estimated monthly value, and notes.
3. Click Add Lead. The lead is created in the New stage and you land on its detail page, ready to start working it.

How to work the pipeline

The Pipeline view shows your leads as a kanban board with five columns: New, Contacted, Quote Sent, Won, and Lost. Working a lead is as simple as moving its card.

1. Drag a card from one column to the next as the relationship progresses.
2. When you drag a card into Lost, a short dialog lets you record an optional reason (price, timing, went with a competitor) so you can learn from it later, or cancel and keep the lead in your pipeline.
3. Click any card to open that lead's full detail page.
4. Use the stats cards at the top as one-click filters, and narrow further with the search box and the source and assignee filters. Prefer a flat view? Toggle to the List layout at any time.

How to log activities on the timeline

Each lead has its own Activity Timeline that keeps a running, newest-first history of everything that has happened. Some entries are added for you automatically, such as when the lead was created or moved to a new stage. You add the rest.

1. Open a lead from your pipeline.
2. Click Add Note to jot down anything worth remembering, then Save Note.
3. Click Log Call after you talk with a prospect, add a few notes about the conversation, and save.

Every entry is stamped with who did it and when, so when you pick a lead back up next week the full story is right there.

How to send email and capture replies

You can email a prospect without leaving the lead page.

1. On the lead, click Send Email. Optionally pick a saved template to fill in the subject and message, then edit the body to suit.
2. Click Send Email. The message is logged on the timeline, and if the lead was still New it moves to Contacted automatically.
3. When the customer replies, their response lands right back on the lead's timeline as an Email received entry, attachments and all. You can answer in-thread with Reply, and the conversation stays a single, tidy thread in the customer's inbox.

This keeps your whole back-and-forth with a prospect in one place instead of scattered across your personal email.

How to convert a won lead into a client

When a prospect says yes, you should not have to retype everything you already know about them.

1. On the lead, click Convert.
2. The Convert to Client form pre-fills the client name, contact details, and property address from the lead. Review and adjust anything that needs it.
3. Click Convert to Client. In one step, HomeWatcher creates the client, their property, and the property address, marks the lead Won, and links the two records so you can always trace the client back to where they came from.

From there, your new client is a full operational account, ready for schedules, visits, reports, and invoices.

What comes next

A healthy pipeline is the start of a healthy business. Explore everything HomeWatcher can do on the features page, or get started and add your first lead today.