Getting Started: The Prospect Pipeline (Overview)

To track all group signups and connections, head over to the Prospect Pipeline by clicking on "People" in the top navigation and click "Prospects" from the drop-down menu.

No matter how someone gets connected to a group, they’ll funnel through the Prospect "pipeline."

Many prospects will be added from the GroupFinder. Watch this overview video to see how that works.

Here, we'llll go over each stage a person might enter into as they get connected.

Each column represents each stage and it flows from left to right, which follows the natural flow of getting someone connected.

Prospects Stage

Starting on the far left column labeled Prospects, this is where many people will first enter into the pipeline. This is a list of all the people who have just expressed interest in being involved in a group.

Prospects in this first stage can be added in three ways:

1. You manually add them, such as when they fill out a card during the weekend services, send an email or call expressing interest
2. They fill out the general group interest form that we provide you.
3. They fill out the “Need Help” form on the GroupFinder if they are having a hard time finding a group.

However someone gets added to their first stage, the typical next step is to contact them to make some kind of follow-up, such as getting their group preferences or telling them which group you were able to connect them to. Once you make that contact, you just simply drag and drop them into the next stage.

Note: You’ll notice that next to each person’s name is a number in a box, which represents how many days that person has been in that particular stage. The longer they wait, the higher up the list they will appear and the strong the box color will appear.

Contacted Stage

This is a list of all the people that have been contacted about joining a group. You can click on the person’s name to pull up a window to see or adjust their group preferences, contact information and even make notes, such as when you made the follow-up and what was said in that conversation.

Connected Stage

Once you’ve made the necessary follow-up and have found a group to connect them to, drag and drop the prospect into the Connected stage. When you do, it will prompt you to find the group you connected them to.

Side note: If you use the GroupFinder, anyone who fills out the contact form on a group’s public profile will automatically be entered into the Connected Stage and it will say GroupFinder underneath their name. Click on their name to pull up the pop-up and you can see which group that person got connected to.

For this Connected Stage, there’s typically nothing you need to do here. GroupVitals will automatically move each prospect from this stage over into the Needs Follow-up stage based upon either one of these three scenarios:

1. The day after they are supposed to attend their group for the first time (if there's a meeting schedule setup for the group).

2. If you have the accept/decline setting turned on, then a person will automatically move to the Needs Follow-Up stage once they are accepted by the leader of the group.

3. If options 1 and 2 above don't happen within 30 days, then on day 30 prospects will automatically be set as members of the group and moved over to the Needs Follow-Up stage after 30 days.

Note: You may notice (Pending Acceptance) underneath someone’s name in this stage. This means that the group leader needs to officially accept the person into the group. You can adjust your group settings to either turn this accept/decline option off by setting the GroupFinder signup person status to either Member or Guest.  Learn more about that here.

Needs Follow-up Stage

The list of people in the Needs Follow-up Stage need your attention.

The benefit with this stage is to prevent anyone from falling through the cracks. Every so often, people will get connected to a group but either never show up, or show up once and never go back. And far too often, the staff aren’t aware of when this happens, which can possibly leave that person feeling forgotten about and unvalued. So everyone in this stage is your cue to follow up either with that person or the group leader to check-in and see if they have been showing up to the group and if they haven’t, this is your chance to help them find a new group.

Prospects are moved here the day after they were supposed to attend their new group for the first time and whoever is in charge of this prospect will get an email notification. 

If after 30 days the prospect isn't removed from the Needs Follow-Up stage, then they will automatically be marked as Joined for the group and removed from the pipeline.

Removing Someone from the Pipeline

After someone from the needs follow-up stage gets follow-up with, the natural next step is that they either joined the group or they didn’t. Either way, drag and drop them into one of the two boxes at the bottom. If they joined the group, they’ll be removed from the pipeline. If they didn’t join, you can either put them back into the beginning of the pipeline or remove them completely and give a reason.

If after 30 days the prospect isn't removed from the Needs Follow-Up stage, then they will automatically be marked as Joined for the group and removed from the pipeline.

Pipeline Tags

You can use custom tags to track specific types of prospects. Such as people who filled out the general signup form who are RSVPing for a signup event or they are trying to find a specific type of group. You can create new tags in the same box when assigning a tag to a prospect.

Prospect Responsibilities

Different staff members can be assigned to be responsible for different prospects. By default, only one staff member will be responsible for all new prospects that get added from the GroupFinder or by filling out the general signup form. If you have multiple campuses, then you can assign a person from each campus to be responsible for form submissions from their campus.

You can also re-assign responsibility by clicking on the prospect and in the pop-up window, select a new staff member under the Who’s Responsible? drop-down .To set the default responsible person for new prospects, click on the gear-icon in the pipeline sub-menu and select Pipeline Settings. It will take you to the settings area for the pipeline and from here, you can assign a new staff member to be responsible for new prospects. You can always add prospect tags on this page.