What is a Lead?
Leads can be used to capture potential opportunities within Enterprise CRM, such as people you've met at a conference or someone who emailed your business unit requesting additional information.
Using the Leads functionality can help you track prospect information and interactions for reporting purposes. It can also help you check for existing records within Enterprise CRM or quickly create new Contact, Organization, and/or Opportunity records with Lead conversion.
What Are My Privacy Options?
Leads are a record type that is private to your business unit. Any information within the Lead record is private to your business unit. Any record associations with the Lead are also private to your business unit.
Once converted, however, information on the Lead that transfers over to the newly created Contact, Bio and/or Organization record(s) will be public to all users within CRM. Opportunities and Reserved Contact Data are private so those will remain private to your business unit.
Navigate to the Lead record (if needed)
- If you have enough information to find the Lead you may want to use the Global Search bar.
- If you do not have enough information to search or are working from a specific List View click on the Leads Tab from your homepage if showing in your default tabs or click on the All Tabs (+) button and select Leads from the list.
- From Leads Home you can either click on the name of the Lead, if showing in your default View, or select the appropriate selection from the dropdown in the View: Menu and click Go!
- Once the appropriate Lead is visible click on the Lead Name in the list to bring up the Lead record.
Before You Get Started
Once on the Lead record, prior to converting, you may want to verify the information entered and consider how the information will transfer to different records based on selections you will make.
Can this Lead be Converted?
- Check with your internal business processes but you may need to ensure that the Lead Status is Qualified before considering conversion.
- You can't convert a Lead that's associated with an active approval process or has pending workflow actions.
- A good practice prior to converting is to always check for existing records with Find Duplicates to ensure that any existing records that the Lead should be associated with are correctly attributed during the conversion process.
Field and Activity Transfer information:
- Anything entered in the Honorific dropdown, First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Email, Country, Street, City, State/Province, Zip/Postal Code, or Description fields will automatically get pulled into any Contact record created as a result of converting the Lead.
- The information in the Company field will be the Organization Name, the Account Name on the Opportunity, and potentially the Opportunity Name if you do not change this field on the Convert Lead screen for any created records.
- Anything entered in the Phone Number,Email, Country, Street, City, State/Province, Zip/Postal Code, Website,No. of Employees, Annual Revenue, or Industry fields will automatically get pulled into any Organization record created as a result of converting the lead.
- The value selected in the Lead Source dropdown will automatically get pulled into any Opportunity record created as a result of converting the lead.
- Any associated Opt-out checkbox information or Activities, such as Tasks, Emails, or Notes and information entered in the Description and Lead Source fields will get automatically pulled into any Reserved Contact Data created as a result of converting the Lead.
- If you are updating an existing Contact, Reserved Contact Data, and/or Organization with a Lead that you are converting note that information from the dropdown selections will only override current information if that field is BLANK on the existing record(s).
- When a Lead is converted by someone who isn't the Lead Owner, all workflow Tasks associated with the Lead that are assigned to that User, except email alerts, are reassigned to the Lead Owner. Workflow Tasks assigned to Users other than the Lead Owner and Lead Converter aren't changed.
Interaction with other functionality:
- For Chatter when you convert a Lead into an existing Organization, you don't automatically follow that account. However, when you convert the Lead into a new Organization, you automatically follow the new account, unless you disabled feed tracking for accounts in your Chatter settings.
- If the Lead matches an existing Contact and both records are linked to the same Campaign, the campaign Member Status is determined by whichever is further along in the lifecycle of the campaign.
- For example, if the Lead Member Status is Sent and the Contact Member Status is Responded, the Responded value is applied to the Contact.
- Related Campaign information is always associated with the new Contact record, regardless of the User's sharing access to the campaign.
- When more than one Campaign is associated with a Lead, the most recently associated Campaign is applied to the Primary Campaign Source field on the Opportunity, regardless of the User's sharing access to the Campaign.
Convert the Lead
- When you are ready and have ensured the accuracy of the information entered click Enhanced Convert at the top of the screen.
- Once on the Lead Conversion screen you are able to fill in information or leave fields blank as needed.
- Record Owner will default to you but you are able to use the Lookup icon to search for and find a different User as well.
- The Send Email to the Owner checkbox will send a notification email to the Owner about the lead conversion and assignment if checked off.
- The Create a new Bio Record on Conversion checkbox will create a new Employment Bio record associating the Contact and Organization records either created or associated by converting the Lead.
- The Organization Name field allows you in the dropdown the options of creating a new record or associating with any current Organization records that have the same name.
- Opportunity Name will default to various values based on selections made on the Lead record but can manipulated here as needed. Check with your internal business processes to see if you are using a standardized naming convention for this field.
- The Do not create a new opportunity upon conversion checkbox allows you to convert the Lead without creating a new Opportunity record.
- Opportunity Record Type allows you to use the dropdown to select an opportunity type as needed per internal business processes.
- You may to create a Task that will be assigned to the Record Owner from this screen by filling in the appropriate information in the Subject, Due Date, Comments, Status, Priority, and Reminder fields according to internal business practices. This Task will automatically be associated with the Reserved Contact Data record either selected or being created.
- Underneath the Convert Lead section of the screen there is a section for Potential Matching Contacts that will allow you to look through and select any potentially matching Contact records as needed.
- Use the Similar Contact Records dropdown in this section to make the desired selection.
- Once the desired field on this screen have been filled in click Convert to be brought to the Opportunity, Organization,or Contact record based on selections made above.