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About LeadsA lead is a person who has indicated an interest in your products or services. You can enter leads manually or they can be assigned to you. Assigned leads require some follow-up to determine if they have a chance of eventually generating revenue for the company. Creating a lead record is a quick way to gather new customer information. In one record you can enter details about the company, the person, and the business interest, instead of creating three different records for an account, a contact, and an opportunity. A lead moves through the lead management process in this sequence of stages: evaluating, qualifying, and converting to an opportunity. Instead of being qualified, a lead may be removed by archiving it. Instead of being converted to an opportunity, a qualified lead may be removed by rejecting it. The next section explains the stages in more detail. Evaluating LeadsDuring evaluation, the person evaluating the lead performs a number of ongoing activities:
Qualifying LeadsThe qualification process helps the evaluator to gather enough information to determine which leads to pursue further. When the evaluator determines that a lead has some potential for generating revenue, the evaluator qualifies the lead. The system then checks to make sure that certain critical fields contain data. If the criteria have been met, the lead is marked as qualified, and becomes visible to the sales person as a newly qualified lead. Qualifying leads accurately helps your company to spend more time working on high-potential business deals. Company administrators can set up Lead Qualification scripts to help evaluators to qualify leads accurately and consistently. (For information on setting up assessment scripts, see Setting Up Assessment Scripts). Archiving LeadsAlternatively, if the lead is considered to have no value to the company, then the evaluator can archive the lead. The system then removes the lead from the lead management process. TIP: To sort archived leads, create a new list called Archived Leads. For more information on creating lists, see Creating and Refining Lists. Converting Leads to OpportunitiesIf a lead has enough potential value, the evaluator can convert it to an opportunity. The system prompts the evaluator for an account to link to the lead, a contact at that account to link to the lead, and an opportunity to link to the lead. The system then creates a new opportunity with some values carried over from the lead, such as potential revenue and estimated close date. The system then removes the lead from active evaluation (although it can still be viewed if desired). What Happens During ConversionSome information from the lead record is carried over to the relevant areas in the Account, Contact, and Opportunity records that are created during the conversion process. The following table shows how the fields are mapped among the records.
Additionally, some fields show different values as a result of the lead conversion process. The following table lists the new values.
Ownership of Related Lead Records After ConversionIf you have populated the Sales Person field, when the lead is converted that person becomes the owner of all related records. If this field is not populated, the user converting the lead becomes the owner of all related records by default. However, the company administrator can change this behavior using the Lead Conversion Mapping feature. For more information, see Mapping Additional Fields During Lead Conversion. Rejecting Qualified LeadsQualified leads can also be rejected. This is typically done in organizations where the person or group evaluating leads is different from the sales people who take qualified leads and convert them into revenue. In those organizations, the sales person assigned to a qualified lead may determine that the lead is not as valuable as the evaluator had indicated. When rejecting a lead, the sales person must specify a reason for the rejection. The system records that a rejection occurred, who rejected it, and why it was rejected. The sales person may also choose to have the lead reassigned as part of the rejection. Depending on the company's policies, the lead may be reassigned to a manager for follow-up, or it may go back to the original evaluator for further assessment. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Published 05/11/2007 |