A Lead represents a potential business opportunity. You can think of leads as business cards. You have their contact information, but the lead hasn't yet decided if they want to formally evaluate your business, and you haven't yet determined if they're the right fit to work together.
You may collect leads from your marketing activities such as trade shows, advertisements, presentations, etc.
Usually or unfortunately most of your Leads will not generate any businesses. The CRM system considers that by treating Leads different than all other contact information stored in the CRM. It is meaningful to avoid useless Leads loads the CRM system unnecessarily. For this reason, Leads are not linked to other accounts or contact information.
It’s important to define your lead strategy, so you can determine if it is profitable for you to keep track of Leads.To answer this, you should take into consideration two main factors:
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Firstly,if your sales process starts as soon as you're aware of a prospective customer/opportunity, you don't need leads, while on the other hand if you qualify prospective customers/opportunities before moving them through your sales process, leads help you keep track of this prospective business.
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Secondly, if you receive one at a time, you may not need leads, as you can qualify these individually when they come in.
In order to work with leads effectively, the CRM system provides you a set of tools.
Create a Lead
You've decided leads work for your business. Let’s try creating your First Lead!
If you click on New Lead at the Quick-Create menu you are offered a quick entry menu for leads, but only for the name, company, phone, and email entries.
If you want to collect more detailed lead information you may:
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Click on the Sales tab at the navigation area shown in the figure.
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Use the plus icon to open the edit view for a new lead. Now you can enter all the lead information you have.
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Click on Save to save your entries at the CRM system.
Important!
Congratulations! You'll see your lead listed in the Leads List View now. You can click the lead to pull up the details when you're ready to edit the record or convert the lead.
When you create a Lead, you can capture the following customer-related data:
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Contact data to a single person or organization
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Description of a lead
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Assessment of the value of a particular lead for your company
These data will be stored as master lead data within your CRM. Your administrator may modify the type and amount of master data necessary for your business.
After clicking on the More Information tab you have the possibility to work with the Lead as shown in the figure.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Activities: | You may link this Lead with activities such as calls, meetings or tasks. Here you get a list of all activities related to this lead and you can create new activities. |
| Emails: | Here you see a list of all emails you have send to the contact of this lead or you may use the Email button to send emails |
| History: | All activities of the past are listed in history if they have not been deleted before and marked as held at the calendar. |
| Attachment and Notes: | You may add notes or attachments to leads. An attachment can be any type of file such as data sheets, contracts etc. |
| Products: | You may add information about the products or services that a lead refers to. |
| Campaign: | You may select a campaign to which a lead is related. |
Leads List View
You may reach the lead list view at the Sales > Leads menu as shown in the figure.
At this menu you may:
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Delete leads: Mark the leads to be deleted and hit the Delete button
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Send emails to leads: Mark the leads to be receivers and hit the Send mail button.
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Mass Edit: A pop window will be shown where you select fields to be updated and provide the new value.
