D365: How to create sales prospect and convert prospect to the customer

If customer expressing interest in a certain products you can treat that customer like a prospect. In general, prospect is a possible sell-to entity. So, in essence, it can become an actual customer.

Sales and marketing teams can manage prospects by manually creating and maintaining prospects directly in AX.

Before jumping into prospects creation, there are several configurations that needs to be done.

Relation types

Navigate to Sales and marketing > Setup > Prospects > Relation types.

This form is used to create and maintain types of relations. You can create any kind of relation type with Table source such as:

• Customer
• Vendor
• Relation

At the time of prospect creation, relation type with Table source = Relation type will be used.

To create a new relation type, click New button

Fill in Type, Description, Table source.

If Delete converted prospect is turned on, AX will delete prospect records after they’ve been converted to a customer. Think whether you want to keep them or remove them after converting.

Sales and marketing parameters

Navigate to Sales and marketing > Setup > Sales and marketing parameters.

Switch to Prospects FastTab

Set the default values that will be used when you create a new prospect in the Prospect details form.

Creating a Prospect

After engagement with the representative (this could take the form of a chain of email messages, a phone call, or a meeting) you can enter that customer into AX with further converting into customer.

The following steps outline the solution process to create prospect:

Navigate to Sales and marketing > Relationships > Prospects > All prospects.

Click New button to create new prospect.

Create prospect form will be opened.

Type ID and Currency will be set by default from Sales and marketing parameters with ability to override them.

Populate all necessary information.

Click Save button.

Prospect details form will be opened.

Expand Miscellaneous Details FastTab.

Notice that default values are set here as well from Sales and marketing parameters.

Note: If Type ID value is changed to one of the following Relation types:
Relation type with Table source Cust table
Relation type with Table source Vendor table
error message will be thrown:
Cannot create prospect of type customer or vendor directly.
This is done in order to use Prospect form only for prospects creation and not for customer and vendors creation.

Switch between tabs and set the data if needed. 

Note: Customer group is mandatory for converting prospect to customer and Vendor group is mandatory for converting prospect to Vendor. It can be filled in manually directly on the Prospects details form in the Miscellaneous details FastTab, or can be set by default on Sales and marketing parameters.

Convert a Sales Prospect to a Sales Account

The following steps outline the solution process to convert prospects to customer:

On the Prospect details form switch to General tab on the Action pane.

In the Convert section, select Convert to customer button.

Confirmation dialog box will appear.

Click Yes.

Customer account form will be opened in order to specify Customer account for the customer that you are going to create.

Fill in Customer account.

You will have the opportunity to check the validity of the account number by clicking on check button.

AX is validating whether specified format of the customer account is right (Number sequence format for the Customer is used from Account receivable parameters).

AX is validating whether specified customer account isn’t currently in use by another customer.

Click OK.

Navigate to Sales and marketing > Customers > All customers to validate created customer.

In order to see a list of prospects that have been converted to customers follow the steps below:

Navigate to Sales and marketing > Relationships > Prospects > Converted prospects.

Summary:

This feature is helpful for creating prospects. Later prospects will be used in the sales process by converting them into customers.