CRM: leads, lifecycle & AI scoring

Steeren includes a lightweight CRM. It's where every lead your site captures lands - form submissions, imports, and leads pushed in from elsewhere - and it keeps track of who those people are, where they are in your funnel, and what's happened with them. It's deliberately focused: contacts are the heart of it, with companies and deals as lighter supporting pieces (more on those at the end).

This guide walks through what you actually work with: the two ways a contact's state is tracked (its lifecycle stage and its working status), the AI fit/intent scoring that helps you prioritize new leads, the activity timeline that records everything, and the current shape of companies and deals.

Two ways to track a contact: stage and status

Each contact carries two separate pieces of state, and it's worth understanding the difference, because it's easy to assume they're the same thing.

• Stage is the lifecycle - where the contact sits in your funnel. It's the big-picture view, and it generally moves forward over time.
• Status is the working state - what's happening with that person right now. It's the day-to-day disposition you flip as you handle the lead.

The two move independently. A contact still in the lead stage can already be working. A marketing-qualified lead can be marked unqualified. A sales-qualified lead can be dropped back into nurture. Think of it as where they are in your funnel versus how you've dispositioned them today.

Stage - where they are in your funnel

lead -> mql -> sql -> customer
                 ↘ disqualified

Nothing forces a strict order - you can move a contact wherever it needs to go. When you change a stage, Steeren records the move on the contact's timeline so you can see when and how it happened.

[!NOTE] Moving a contact to customer or disqualified stops any nurture sequence they're enrolled in - both are treated as "this person is done moving through the funnel."

Status - how you've dispositioned them

When you mark a contact unqualified, you can attach a reason - it's saved on the contact so you (or a teammate) can see later why it was passed over. Marking a contact unqualified also stops any nurture sequence they're in. Other status changes don't: you can move a lead to working while a sequence keeps running, which is intentional.

[!TIP] disqualified (a stage) and unqualified (a status) often go together when you reject a lead, but they're separate. When you filter or search, pick the one that matches what you actually mean - funnel position versus working state.

AI fit/intent scoring

When a new lead arrives, Steeren can automatically score it for you, so you don't have to triage a full inbox by hand. Scoring comes in two numbers:

• Fit (0-100) - how well this person matches the kind of buyer you're after. It's judged against your ideal customer profile (ICP) and industry.
• Intent (0-100) - how much their message and behavior suggest they actually want what you sell. It's measured against your products and your unique selling points.

Together, these let you sort your leads and put your time where it counts - a high-fit, high-intent lead is the one to call first.

When scoring happens

• A new lead comes in from a form on your site. It gets scored automatically.
• You ask for it. There's a "Classify" button in the lead side panel, so you can score (or re-score) any contact on demand.

Scoring runs in the background. You don't wait on it - the lead shows up right away, and its scores fill in moments later.

The AI suggests; you decide

Along with the two scores, the AI offers a suggested stage, a suggested status, and a recommended next best action (for example, "Book a discovery call"). These are suggestions - a starting point.

[!NOTE] The AI never moves a contact on its own. It tells you what it would do and why, and you stay in control. Applying a suggestion is always a deliberate step you (or a teammate) take - changing the stage or status yourself.

Set up your context for better scores

The scoring is only as good as what the AI knows about your business. If you haven't told Steeren who your ideal customer is or what your company does, it won't guess - instead of inventing a number, it leaves the fit score blank and notes that it didn't have enough to go on.

So a blank fit score means "we couldn't responsibly score this one yet," not "bad fit." A genuinely poor match gets a low number, not a blank. If you're seeing a lot of blanks, that's a sign to fill in your company profile, ICP, and product details - the scores get sharper as soon as you do.

Spotting spam

The scoring also flags obvious bot or junk submissions as spam. Spam contacts aren't deleted - they stay in your CRM so you have the full picture - but they're left out of nurture sequences so you don't waste a drip on a junk address.

The activity timeline

Every contact has a timeline that records its history - stage and status changes, owner reassignments, tags, notes, and AI scoring runs. It's the fastest way to understand a lead at a glance, without piecing the story together yourself. It reads newest-first.

The timeline is append-only: entries are never edited or deleted. If something needs correcting, you add a new entry - a note, for example - rather than rewriting the past. That keeps the record trustworthy.

Each entry also shows who did it - a teammate, the system (for automatic steps like a form submission landing), or the AI (for a scoring run) - so it's always clear whether a person, an automation, or the AI was responsible.

[!TIP] The timeline updates live. When the AI finishes scoring a lead while you have its panel open, the new activity appears on its own - no need to refresh the page.

How you work a contact

Day to day, working a lead comes down to a few simple actions:

• Assign an owner so it's clear who's responsible. Leads that come in from your site start out unowned, ready to be picked up.
• Move the stage as the lead progresses through your funnel.
• Set the status as you handle them - working, contacted, qualified, and so on.
• Add a note to capture context - a call summary, a detail from an email, anything a teammate would want to know.
• Tag contacts to group and find them later.

Each of these lands on the contact's timeline, so the history builds itself as you work.

Companies & deals

Contacts are the developed part of the CRM. Companies and deals are intentionally lighter today - enough to link a contact to an organization and jot down an opportunity, not a full sales-ops system.

Companies

A company record holds a name, domain, industry, and size, and a contact can be linked to one.

When someone fills in their company on a form, Steeren matches it to an existing company (by name, ignoring case) or creates a new one, and links the contact automatically - so form leads don't show up as belonging to no one. Today you can browse and add companies.

Deals

You can record a deal against a contact - a name, an amount, a currency, and a stage - to track an opportunity. It's a simple placeholder for now: you can add and list deals, but deal stages are free-text and there's no full pipeline behind them.

[!NOTE] If you're looking to run a full sales pipeline on deals, that's not here yet - deals today are mainly a way to note an amount against a contact. Your funnel logic lives on the contact's stage and status, which is where to manage it.

FAQ

Why two state fields instead of one? Because where someone is in your funnel and what you're doing about them right now are different questions. Stage is the big, mostly-forward picture; status churns within a stage. Keeping them separate lets you say things one field couldn't - like "this sales-qualified lead is back in nurture."

A lead has a blank fit score. Is it a bad fit? No. A blank means the AI couldn't responsibly score fit yet - usually because your ICP or company profile isn't filled in. The timeline notes the reason. A genuinely poor fit gets a low number, not a blank.

Can I set the scores myself? No - the scores come from the AI's scoring run. If you want fresh numbers, run scoring again; the latest run updates the contact.

Does scoring change a contact's stage or status? No. It suggests a stage and status, but it never moves the contact. Applying a suggestion is always a step you take.

Can I edit or delete a timeline entry? No - the timeline is append-only by design, which is what makes it trustworthy. To set the record straight, add a new entry (like a note).

Can I run a full sales pipeline on deals? Not yet. Deals are simple today - add and list, with free-text stages and no pipeline behind them. Manage your funnel on the contact's stage and status instead.