Every lead in Socket is created one of six ways. This article covers each route and what each one brings onto the lead record:
Creating a lead manually
Generating a lead with AI
Creating a lead from a proposal
Capturing leads from a website form
Creating leads from an AI assistant
Creating leads from Zapier or the API
Creating a lead manually
Select New Lead on the Leads board.
Select New Client, then search for the company through Companies House, or enter the details manually.
Complete the lead details: Deal Title (optional), Owner, Deal Size, Deal Temperature, and Source.
Select Create Lead.
Drag and drop the Lead to move the deal through the stages on the board.
Searching Companies House brings through the company number, registered office address, incorporation date, year-end date, confirmation statement due date, next accounts due date, and the directors. Those details carry into the client record when the lead converts. There is more in Adding and editing clients.
Generating a lead with AI
Generate with AI creates a lead from unstructured text, so an enquiry that arrived does not have to be retyped as a record.
Select Generate with AI on the Leads board. Socket accepts any text, such as a call transcript, a pasted email thread, a pasted Slack message, or a prompt written directly describing the enquiry.
The agent runs in three steps: Discovery, Generate, and Review. Nothing is created until the draft is saved at the review step, and nothing is sent to the client at any point.
Reviewing the draft
The review step is a full draft of the lead, in editable fields. Every part can be changed or removed before saving.
Client: The company the lead will be created against, with its entity type. Where the agent finds a possible match against an existing client or prospect, it explains the match and offers
Create a new prospect or Use an existing client: Creating a second record for a firm that already exists is difficult to reverse, so the match is checked here rather than after saving.
The lead: Title, Temperature, Deal Size, Source, and an optional source note.
Contact: Name, email, and phone. Where the source material did not include an email address, the field is flagged, because an email address is required to create the lead.
Notes: Drafted notes, each with a heading of up to 50 characters and a body. Headings are grouped by subject, such as the business profile, the compliance requirements, and the reporting needs.
Actions: Drafted activities, each with a description, a Type (Call, Email, Meeting, or Task), a due date, and detail. Anything that already happened during the conversation can be marked Already done. Due dates can be set here.
What the call left open: Everything the source material did not cover, split into three groups: details you can add in the fields above, details with no field on the lead record, and the judgement calls the agent made. Judgement calls include how it read the temperature and deal size, how it matched the company name, and how it interpreted vague dates such as "in the next couple of days".
Saving creates the lead with its notes and activities. The lead's timeline records the entry Lead generated with AI.
Creating a lead from an existing proposal
A proposal that is already in progress does not need a lead created separately first. Create New Lead and Link to Existing Lead sit at the top of the proposal. Creating a new lead this way creates and links it in one step.
This is available on pending, active, and won proposals. A deal that was quoted before the pipeline was in use can therefore be brought onto the board mid-flight, and a client already being served can be given a lead record retrospectively. A lead created this way is placed into the pipeline status according to its proposal's status.
Linking to a lead that already exists
From the proposal: select Link to Existing Lead.
From the lead: select Link to Proposal in the top right of the lead record, then choose from the proposals open for that client.
Capturing leads from a website form
A lead capture form on your website creates the lead itself, with the enquirer's answers attached and the source recorded as Form.
Submissions are matched on email address. Where the address matches an existing lead, the submission is added to that lead as a note instead of creating a second one.
Setting the form up, mapping answers to lead fields, and the Calendly redirect after submission are covered in Capturing leads from a form.
One lead capture form is included with the Leads add-on, so you don't need the Forms add-on to do this. If you want more than one form, or use of the other form templates, you'll need to include the Forms module to your subscription.
A fresh enquiry is a good moment to run AI lead research, which reads Companies House and their website so you know who you're dealing with before you ring them.
Creating leads from an AI assistant
With Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini connected through Socket MCP, an assistant creates and updates leads, moves stages, marks leads lost with a reason, reassigns owners, and manages activities. The assistant reads your own stages, sources, and team.
Creating leads from Zapier or the API
Leads push into Socket from the rest of your stack through Zapier or the API. The Zapier Pipeline Stage dropdown lists your real stages, so an inbound lead is created in the stage you choose rather than the leftmost one.
Leads created this way get Companies House enrichment in the same way as leads created in the app. The lead write API also updates details, moves stages, and adds notes.
Finding Your Deal Record History after a proposal is Active
Once your proposal is Active, you can always access the Lead Record history from within the proposal.
Find the proposal from the 'Proposal' tab on the client record, or from the main Proposal dashboard.
