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About Leads

A 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 Leads

During evaluation, the person evaluating the lead performs a number of ongoing activities:

  • Calls, emails, or visits the contact to exchange information.
  • Updates specific information about the lead with more accurate and newly discovered information.
  • Creates, tracks, and completes activities regarding the lead.
  • Logs notes regarding the interaction.
  • (Optional but recommended) Links the lead to an account and a contact, which has these advantages:
    • The user assigned to the account or contact (who may or may not also be the user assigned to the lead) can view the lead during the evaluation process, because it will appear in the Account and Contact pages.
    • The lead owner can access additional information about the account or contact by clicking a link.
    • The lead owner can enter more details than can typically be stored with a lead, such as additional contacts at the account, ship to address, and so on.
    • If the lead is converted to an opportunity, the existing account and contact links can speed up that process.

Qualifying Leads

The 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 Leads

Alternatively, 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 Opportunities

If 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 Conversion

Some 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.

Lead

Account

Opportunity

Contact

Address

Billing Address
Shipping Address

 

Primary Address

Annual Revenues

Annual Revenues

 

 

Cellular Phone #

 

 

Cellular Phone #

City

Billing City
Shipping City

 

Primary City

Company

Account Name

Account

Account

Country

Billing Country
Shipping Country

 

Primary Country

Description

 

Description

 

Email

 

 

Email

Estimated Close Date

 

Close Date

 

First Name

 

 

First Name

Industry

Industry

 

 

Job Title

 

 

Job Title

Last Name

 

 

Last Name

Lead Owner

 

 

 

Mr./Ms.

 

 

Mr./Ms

Never Email

 

 

Never Email

Next Step

 

Next Step

 

Number of Employees

Number of Employees

 

 

Potential Revenue

 

Revenue

 

Primary Phone #

 

 

Work Phone #

Product Interest

 

Opportunity Name becomes:
Product Interest (Contact Full Name)

 

Rating

 

 

 

Source

 

Lead Source

Lead Source

State/Province

Billing State/Province
Shipping State/Province

 

Primary State/Province

Website

Web Site

 

 

Work Fax #

 

 

Work Fax #

Zip/Postal Code

Billing Zip Code
Shipping Zip Code

 

Primary Zip/Postal Code

Additionally, some fields show different values as a result of the lead conversion process. The following table lists the new values.

This record/field

Changes to this value

Lead record

 

Status

Converted

Account record

 

Account Type

Prospect

Owner

User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Related Lead Records After Conversion.

Opportunity record

 

Status

Pending

Sales Stage

Building Vision

Probability

50%

Owner

User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Related Lead Records After Conversion.

Contact record

 

Contact Type

Prospect

Owner

User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Related Lead Records After Conversion.

Ownership of Related Lead Records After Conversion

If 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 Leads

Qualified 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 May 2008