CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is an industry acronym used to describe a tool which helps you manage your interactions with the people and companies in your network.

An activity is a scheduled calendar event which is typically created with participants in Nutshell, such as a phone call or meeting that is expected by all parties to happen at a specific time. Log your work to ensure that you remember what you’ve done next time you’re speaking with your customer. Built-in activity types which can be scheduled and logged are: Phone calls, Meetings, and Virtual meetings. You can also schedule and log custom activity types after predetermining them in your company settings. With activities, you can create official calendar events with your companies, people, and leads. Please note that for these activities to sync to your Google or Office 365 calendar, they must include at least one activity participant.

In Nutshell, the dashboard is designed to be the home base for sales reps. It consists of two major sections: dashboard cards and the dashboard sidebar. Cards are customizable mini-reports that pull data from throughout your Nutshell account to tell you things like: are you on track to meet your quota? Who are the newest leads in your account? What do sales this month look like compared to this time last month? How are you stacking up against the rest of your team? The sidebar allows you to toggle between activities, to-dos, and the timeline (your company feed). It helps you to look back and look ahead to manage your day effectively. Want to learn more? Check out this helpful support video about the Nutshell dashboard.

In Nutshell, a lead represents an opportunity to make a sale. It is synonymous with a “deal”. A lead is generally connected to a contact Person or Company in Nutshell (so that the sales rep knows their point person), but all of the information specific to the sale is stored with the lead, such as products, the expected close date, and value of the sale, as well as the pre-defined sales process. Want to learn more about how you can get the most from using Leads in Nutshell? Check out this great support video.

A pipeline is a visual representation of your sales funnel: sales prospects and where they are in the purchasing process. Pipelines also provide an overview of an individual's forecast and how close they are to meeting their quota, as well as how close a sales team as a whole is to reaching its quota. A pipeline enables you to forecast the lead quantity and value that will close over a specified period of time. In Nutshell, your pipeline can be visualized in your Lead board, and Nutshell Pro customers can analyze their pipeline in depth via the funnel report.

Sales automation is a defined workflow that instructs sales reps on what to do to close a sale. Sales automation includes the actual action items that your team takes in order to win a sale, while also automatically transitioning your leads to the right place in your pipeline based on the information your team collects.

Your sales automation stages are the major milestones each lead passes through during the buying process, which can include goals that need to be met, tasks that should be completed, and even things that happen outside of Nutshell such as sending them a MailChimp campaign or notifying other team members in Slack.

Companies, People, and Leads are visible in customizable lists. This is Nutshell's version of a “clickable spreadsheet.” You can filter and sort your lists based on the different data columns that are pulled from information entered on each individual page. The lists are the heart of Nutshell’s CRM database: this is where functionality such as customized filtering, bulk edits, emailing and exporting.

The purpose of hot leads is to give sales reps more control over how they prioritize leads, and make it as simple and intuitive as possible. We talked to a lot of our customers about what makes a lead “hot,” and heard many definitions. A hot lead could mean it is time-sensitive, it's one of your top clients, it's a personal referral, or it has jackpot potential. Learn more about hot leads here.