Converting Leads to Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities
Before you begin. To perform this procedure, your user role must include the Convert Leads privilege and it must have certain access settings to records (see Adding Roles).
You can create account, contact, and opportunity records or merge lead information with existing records by converting the lead record. Depending on your company's settings, the new opportunity record can include information that impacts revenue calculations.
NOTE: Normally, you convert leads to opportunities that have previously been qualified. See Qualifying Leads.
The procedure in this section describes the steps for these two scenarios:
Scenario 1. You have new leads resulting from a campaign your company conducted. As part of each lead record, you have a person's name along with their company name. You now want to create a new contact, a new account, and, potentially, a new opportunity record using information from the lead.
Scenario 2. You run a campaign targeted at existing accounts and contacts. Some leads are generated that you now want to convert to opportunities.
To convert a lead to an account, contact, or opportunity
- Select the lead you want to convert.
For instructions on selecting leads, see Finding Records.
- On the Lead Detail page, click Convert.
- On the Convert Lead page, do one of the following:
- To create new account and contact records for this lead (Scenario 1), select the Auto-Create New Account and Auto-Create New Contact option buttons.
In the Account section, the Company field for the lead appears in the Account Name field by default. In the Contact section, the First Name and Last Name for the lead appear by default.
- To create a new opportunity and link the opportunity to an existing account and contact, select the Use Existing Account and Use Existing Contact option buttons.
If the lead record has an associated account, this account appears in the Associated Account field. If the lead record has an associated contact, this contact appears in the Associated Contact field.
- To link the lead to a different account or contact, click the Lookup icon next to the Associated Account or Associated Contact fields and select another account and contact. Make sure the proper names appear in the Associated Account and Associated Contact fields and that the Use Existing Account and Use Existing Contact option buttons are selected.
- (Optional) To convert the lead to an opportunity, select the Create Opportunity check box and complete the fields.
The First Name and Last Name for the lead appear in the Opportunity Name field by default. Data in the potential revenue, close date, next step, and description fields are also carried into the opportunity record. This data can be edited in the Convert Lead page.
NOTE: You must complete Step 3 (link an account and contact to the lead) before you convert the lead to an opportunity.
- To convert the lead, click Save.
When the conversion is completed:
- The Lead Detail page appears again with these values, most based on the selections you made on the Convert Lead page:
- The Status field for the lead is Converted.
- The Associated Account and Associated Contact field values are the same as the ones that were on the Convert Lead page.
- If you converted the lead to an opportunity, the Associated Opportunity field value is the same as the new opportunity name that was on the Convert Lead page.
- If you converted the lead to an opportunity, the new opportunity record created from the conversion process has the converted Lead linked to the opportunity record.
- If you converted the lead to an opportunity (Step 4), the new opportunity record inherits some field values from the lead.
- You can still view the lead record, but the business processes shift to the opportunity record.
NOTE: For further information about the conversion process and its impact on fields and values, see What Happens During Conversion in About Leads. For further information on deleting records, see Deleting and Restoring Records.
|