The CRM: Your Companies, People and Deals in One Linked Pipeline

The CRM gives a sales team a working customer-relationship system in the time it takes to click Duplicate. It is a ready-made Sapience database: three linked tables — Companies, People and Deals — fourteen saved views that answer the questions a sales team asks every day, and a Contact us form that turns a web enquiry into a new lead. It comes filled with fictional example entries, so you can see how the whole thing works before you enter a single real account.

This article is the complete guide. It starts with what the CRM does for your team, then explains how to get your own copy, how the three tables connect, every saved view, the Contact us form, and the everyday routines that keep a pipeline moving.

The CRM is a template: read-only and shared with everyone in Sapience, so anyone can open it and look around without changing a thing. It is also listed in the Sapience AI Store catalogue under Sales & Marketing. To get a copy you can work in, follow the steps below.

With Copy records too ticked, your copy arrives with the 32 example rows — 8 companies, 12 people and 12 deals — and the 50 links between them. Without the records, you get the three tables, their links, the fourteen views and the form with no rows.

If you have not used a database template before, the Starting From a Database Template article covers templates in general.

Everything hangs off the company: the people who work there, and the deals you run with them.

You make each link once, by picking the company on a person or a deal, and every table stays consistent. No names are copied between spreadsheets. Because Company industry and Company country on a person are looked up from the company, correcting a company's industry once changes it everywhere it appears. The same goes for the contact email shown on each deal.

The two owner columns, Account owner and Deal owner, pick a member of your Sapience team. They are empty in the template, so you assign them in your copy.

Each table opens on an "All" view, and the template adds views for the questions you ask most.

With the example entries, New leads shows Aisha Rahman, Ben Carter, Sam Okafor and Jordan Ellis; Hot leads shows Dana Whitfield, Lukas Fischer and Aisha Rahman; Big open deals shows the Kestrel Enterprise rollout, the Ironbark Factory automation and the Orchard Lane Renewal 2027; and Stalled deals shows Ironbark at 44 days, Fjord at 38 days and Orchard Lane Renewal at 35 days.

The Pipeline groups open deals by stage and shows these columns: Company, Stage, Amount, Win probability, Expected close, Deal owner and Next step. With the example entries, the open amounts add up to $484,000 in Qualification, $290,000 in Discovery, $125,000 in Proposal and $120,000 in Negotiation: $1,019,000 in all.

All fourteen views are tables. In your copy you can change, add or delete any view, and you can switch any table or view to another layout from the Layout menu (Table, Board, Gallery, List, Calendar or Pivot). For example, group a Board by Stage on Deals and drag a card to another lane to change its stage, or put the Deals on a Calendar by Expected close. The Seeing Your Data Your Way: Board, Gallery, List, Calendar and Pivot Views article explains each layout, and Totals, Grouping And Pivot In Database Grids covers the subtotals and the quick sum of selected cells.

The template includes a form on the People table called Contact us. People who want to hear from you fill it in on a web page, on any device and with no Sapience account, and each response becomes a new person record. Its introduction reads:

It asks for six things:

The button reads Send, and after sending, the visitor sees:

To put it to work:

The promise in the success message — a reply within one business day — is yours to keep: change the form's wording in your copy if that is not what your team can deliver. The Collecting Responses With Database Forms article covers forms in full.

Keep Copy records too ticked and your copy arrives with 32 fictional entries, linked together the way a real sales team's records would be.

Every name, email address and phone number is made up — the email addresses use the reserved .example domain and the phone numbers use the 555 range — the money is in US dollars, and the dates fall in 2026. Delete the examples when you are ready, or untick Copy records too when you duplicate and start empty.

Add a row to Companies with the name, industry, status, country, website, phone, number of employees and annual revenue, and pick an Account owner. Use the status Prospect until they buy, then Customer. Customers lists everyone with that status.

Add a row to People: pick the Company, then fill in the job title, email and phone. Set the Lifecycle stage (Lead for someone new), the Lead source and a Lead score, and tick any Interests. A contact does not need a company straight away; you can link it later.

When someone fills in your Contact us form, you get an email and a new row appears in People. Open it, link their company (add the company first if it is new), set the lifecycle stage to Lead, set a lead score, and give them a Next follow-up date. They will then show on Needs a follow-up, and on Hot leads once scored 4 or 5.

Open Hot leads. Contact the people at the top, then set Last contacted to today and a new Next follow-up date. When a lead becomes a real opportunity, change their lifecycle stage to Sales Qualified, and when they buy, to Customer.

Set Next follow-up to the date you promised. Needs a follow-up lists everyone with a date set, soonest first. When you have followed up, set the next date or clear the cell, and the person leaves the list.

Add a row to Deals with a name, the Company, the Primary contact and any other Stakeholders, the Stage, the Amount, a Win probability, the Expected close date, the Deal owner and a Next step. The deal appears on the Pipeline straight away, under its stage.

Change the deal's Stage as it progresses through Qualification, Discovery, Proposal and Negotiation, and it moves to the next group on the Pipeline. Update Last activity and Next step as you work. If you have set up a Board of your Deals grouped by Stage in your copy, drag the card to the next lane instead.

Open Stalled deals. It lists open deals whose Time in stage is 30 days or more. That number is one you enter and update yourself, so keep it current for the view to be trustworthy.

Open Big open deals for every open deal worth $100,000 or more. Tick Strategic on deals that matter beyond their size, and Strategic deals keeps them together, biggest first.

Set the Stage to Closed Won or Closed Lost and enter the Closed on date. The deal leaves the Pipeline and appears in Closed deals. When you win, also set the company's status to Customer and the main contact's lifecycle stage to Customer.

Renewals lists every deal with "Renewal" in its name, soonest close first. Name renewal deals that way, for example "Orchard Lane — Renewal 2027", and they join the list.

Tick Do not contact on a person who has asked not to be approached. They leave New leads.

Set a company's status to Churned and its people's lifecycle stage to Former customer. The company leaves Customers, and the history stays.

Every Sapience database has its own Chat agent, opened with the green Chat button next to the database's name. It works on this one database and with your permissions. In your copy it can find and count entries and read your views. It can also add and change entries for you, asking before it deletes anything, and add columns, views and forms. If you only have read access to a database, it answers questions but changes nothing.

Things to try in your copy:

The Chatting With a Database article covers the Chat agent in full.

Every database can run automations, found under Actions ▸ Automations. An automation watches for an event — a row is added, a row enters a view, a row is updated, a form is submitted or a row is deleted — and then runs the database's agent with instructions you write. For example, when a lead arrives from the Contact us form, you could have the agent look up the company and fill in the columns it can.

A few things to know:

The Automating A Database With Its Agent article covers automations in full.

The CRM gives a sales team one place for its companies, the people who work there and the deals it is running, linked so that every account tells its own story. Its saved views turn that data into the answers a team needs every day: what is in the pipeline, who to call first, what has gone quiet, what is up for renewal and what you have won. The Contact us form brings new enquiries in as ready-made leads. Duplicate it, keep or drop the examples, and it is yours to shape.