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Every prospective car buyer in Dealer Funnel is represented as a Lead — a single record that brings together contact information, vehicle interest, financial data, and the complete history of every conversation, appointment, and note your team has ever exchanged with that person. When you work a lead in Dealer Funnel, you have everything you need in one place: no digging through spreadsheets, no switching tabs, no lost follow-ups.

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What a Lead Contains

A lead record is organized into several panels inside the Lead Detail view. Together, these panels give you and your team a 360-degree picture of the buyer.
The contact panel stores the buyer’s first name, last name, phone number, and email address. Phone is the primary identifier — Dealer Funnel uses it to prevent duplicate records and to route inbound SMS replies to the correct conversation thread.
Vehicle interest captures the year, make, and model the buyer is shopping for, along with any notes about trim preferences, color, or mileage requirements. This information flows into automated funnel messages so your outreach feels personal and specific rather than generic.
The financial panel surfaces enriched credit and demographic data alongside information your team captures directly. You can see the buyer’s FICO score (both reported and modeled), financing ability (cash buyer, finance-ready, or needs special financing), estimated income, auto type preference (new, used, or certified pre-owned), vehicle ownership history, and additional data such as age and gender when available from enrichment sources. This data helps you prioritize leads and route them to the right desk or F&I specialist without having to ask qualifying questions the buyer has already answered.
Every appointment your team sets — whether booked through Dealer Funnel’s scheduling tools or logged manually — appears here with date, time, and outcome. You can see at a glance whether a buyer has shown, no-showed, or rescheduled.
The full conversation thread — SMS, email, and any other channel — is visible in chronological order. Your team can pick up right where the last agent left off without asking the buyer to repeat themselves.
Free-text notes let agents record anything that doesn’t fit a structured field. Labels (color-coded tags) let you categorize leads by segment, campaign, or stage so you can filter and report on them later.

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Lead Statuses

Every lead carries a status that reflects where the buyer is in your sales process. Statuses drive reporting, filter views, and can trigger automated funnel actions.
You can update a lead’s status from the lead detail panel at any time, or in bulk from the Leads table by selecting multiple records and using the Bulk Actions menu.

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The Lead Lifecycle

Leads move through a predictable flow in Dealer Funnel, though the path is never perfectly linear. Understanding this flow helps your team know what action to take at each stage.
  1. Captured — A lead enters Dealer Funnel from any source: a web form submission, a Facebook Lead Ad, an inbound SMS, a DMS feed, or a CSV import. The record is created automatically and lands in the conversation inbox.
  2. Assigned — The lead is routed to an agent, either by automatic round-robin assignment rules or manually by a manager. Unassigned leads appear in a shared queue.
  3. Worked in Conversations — The assigned agent sends messages, answers questions, and builds rapport. The status is updated to reflect engagement level (Hot, Warm, Cold).
  4. Appointment Set — The agent books a showroom visit or phone appointment. The status typically moves to Follow-Up until the appointment is confirmed.
  5. Sold or Recycled — If the deal closes, the lead moves to Sold. If the buyer isn’t ready, the lead moves back into a nurture funnel or is marked Cold for long-term follow-up.

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Lead Score

Dealer Funnel calculates an AI-generated Lead Score from 1 to 100 for every lead. The score reflects two factors: how engaged the buyer has been (open rates, reply rate, appointment history) and how financially qualified they appear based on the data in their profile.
Sort your Leads table by Lead Score descending to surface your highest-opportunity buyers at the top of your working queue. Combine this with a Hot status filter for a laser-focused priority list.
A score above 70 generally indicates a buyer who is both engaged and financially ready — these leads deserve same-day follow-up. Scores below 30 are best handled through automated nurture sequences rather than direct agent time.

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Explore More

Importing Leads

Upload a CSV to bulk-import leads from a previous CRM, event list, or spreadsheet.

Lead Sources

Track which channels — Facebook, website, Cars.com — are driving your best buyers.

Labels & Filters

Tag leads with color-coded labels and build saved filter queues for your team.