A lead in Bitrix24 (Alaio) is an unprocessed inquiry: a form submission, a call, an email, a chat message. The lead's job is to separate the stream of "raw" contacts from actual sales work: a rep checks the inquiry and either converts it into a deal with a contact or marks it as junk. As long as processing relies on manual actions, leads get lost, duplicated and stuck without a responsible person. Let's walk through setting up the section and — the part the help docs stay quiet about — automating lead processing with workflows.

Leads or straight to deals: which CRM mode to choose?

By default a new CRM runs in Simple CRM mode: there is no Leads section, and every inquiry immediately creates a deal with a contact. Classic CRM mode with leads is enabled under CRM → Deals → Settings → CRM mode. The rule of thumb is simple: if inquiries are few and almost every one is qualified, Simple mode saves clicks; if the flow is large and messy (ads, cold lists, multiple channels), you need leads — otherwise the junk lands straight in your deals and ruins the pipeline and reports. Switching modes on a live portal is a painful operation: when you turn leads off, all active leads are converted in bulk, so it's best to make this decision once, at the start.

How to set up leads: the form, stages, sources

Three places to configure. The form: the set and order of fields is edited right in the lead form — remove what you don't need, add your own, pin required fields to stages. Stages: CRM → Settings → Dictionaries → Stages — the lead's path from "Not processed" to conversion or rejection; keep the list short (3–5), these are processing statuses, not a sales pipeline. Sources: the same dictionary — "Advertising", "Website", "Referral"; the source is filled automatically by integrations (forms, telephony, email) and by hand when a lead is created manually. Discipline in the Source field is later your only way to tell which channel actually brings customers.

Repeat inquiries: how not to multiply leads for one customer

A customer who is already in your database fills out the form again — what happens next is decided by the "Repeat leads" setting (CRM → Settings → Other → Mode settings). The built-in mechanism recognizes the customer by a matching phone number or email and creates a repeat lead linked to the existing contact. The weak spot is dirty data: a number with the country code and the same number without it are two different numbers to the system. That's why the first processing step should be normalization: the Format phone number: custom prefix robot brings numbers to a single format, and Parse full name turns "john michael smith" into neat, properly cased name fields. For database hygiene in depth, see the article on cleaning CRM data; for finding and merging the duplicates you've already accumulated, see the guide to duplicates in Bitrix24.

The second line of defense is a check inside a workflow. The Find lead by condition robot searches for leads with the same phone or email: if an active lead already exists, the process doesn't create a new one — it notifies the person responsible for the existing lead, so the repeat inquiry reaches the same rep who was already handling the customer.

How to distribute leads between reps?

Out of the box, the responsible person is assigned by the source settings: CRM forms, telephony and open channels each have their own queue. But round-robin ignores vacations, workload and specialization. In a workflow, distribution gets more flexible: the Random employee from list or department robot picks a random active employee from a department or an explicit list and can exclude the current responsible person — then a standard action changes the responsible person to the one selected. Conditions in the process add the logic: high-value leads go to senior reps, leads from a specific source go to the specialized team. The robot only picks among active employees, so dismissed and blocked accounts never end up in the rotation.

Conversion: what happens when a lead becomes a deal

The "Create on basis" button turns a lead into a deal, a contact and a company. System fields transfer automatically; custom fields transfer by matching: if the lead and the deal have fields with the same type and name, Bitrix24 offers to link them at the first conversion. It's more reliable to set the mapping up in advance: CRM → Settings → Other → Conversion settings. After conversion the lead is closed and stays in the archive with links to the created items — the history of messages and calls isn't lost, it's visible in the contact's timeline.

Lead automation: what robots take over

A typical processing pipeline is built from four steps: normalize the data (phone, name, email) → check for a repeat (Find lead by condition) → distribute (Random employee from list or department) → create a task with a first-touch deadline. A separate case is updating a lead from a different context: a process launched on a deal or on a schedule changes the lead via the Update lead by ID robot — any fields are passed as a JSON object. For how robots themselves work and where to configure them, see the guide to Bitrix24 robots.

Frequently asked questions

How is a lead different from a deal? A lead is an unverified "maybe a customer" inquiry; a deal is confirmed interest with an amount and a pipeline; a lead is single-use (converted and closed), while a customer can have many deals. Can a lead be restored after conversion? No, conversion is irreversible — you can delete the deal, but the lead stays closed; if in doubt, keep the inquiry at the "In progress" stage. Where do junk leads go? They stay in the database with the "Junk" status — worth revisiting periodically: a "couldn't reach" from six months ago may become a customer, and re-running such leads is easy with a bulk workflow launch.

Conclusion

Order in your leads means the right CRM mode, a short list of stages, clean phone numbers and emails at the entry point, protection against repeats, and distribution without manual hand-offs. Everything beyond point-and-click setup is covered by robots from the Roboteka catalog — free to install from Bitrix24 Market. If the scenario you need isn't there, describe the task and we'll build the robot for free.