I'm all confused because there are some links which say Leads is not for existing customers and only for companies who are not yet our accounts.
But in CRM 2013, I see in the Process bar an option to enter existing account and contact.
Our requirement is that we need option to enter in projects which should later qualify into an opportunity, but we should have option to add existing as well as new account or contact. What should be the best fit?
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you could create a relationship to the lead entity and have your new custom entity as a lookup on the lead entity.
Leads is just the standard sales pipeline concept. Most companies sales process is different which is why CRM is good because it's easy to customize to suit each customers needs and way of working.
if you could mark the responses which helped you, that will help other people searching for problems like yours in the future.
Hi Aileen, I know the purpose of Lead is to qualify to customer, and hence I proposed to use a custom entity to capture early projects, which the management is not ready to accept. They want to use the Lead entity to keep it 'as standard as possible'.
But in the meantime, they dont want to create contact each time a Lead is qualified as well. So I know that we are deviating from the Leads concept in CRM :(
When it comes to our Sales processes, the projects last for very long and upto years. So in the early stages of a project or during bidding stage, our sales process is even more complex and we have multiple suppliers,consultants,contractors etc involved. When it is won by a single contractor (who is our customer) thats when we consider it as an opportunity.
So until then we want to keep it separate from opportunity and we dont have any currency fields involved like in an opportunity. Thats why the sales team want a different system to track the projects in early stage which has more of team and collaboration activities instead of currency calculations and products like in opportunity.
I hope you get my point, I am not sure if the Lead entity can be used to meet all our requirements though :(
Hi Sameera,
Based on what you wrote as your requirement, I assume that you are trying to not use Lead to be qualified as new Contact not new Account.
Instead, it will be used to be like potential project and you only key the Topic of the Lead.
If like that, why you don't use Opportunity directly to reduce the long process, lead then qualify first, then becoming Opportunity.
Because I see this, the function of your Lead and Opportunity are similar, to link to the potential customer which you have defined before.
Lead is somewhat like a Cold List of Prospect. If it is a future project, why you don't just use Opportunity, because the point of Lead is to qualify to customer and opportunity.
This is just my assumption, you know the requirement better than me, of course :)
" what will happen if a relationship doesnt exist between the above two?"
--> I am not sure what you mean if a relationship doesn't exist?
To map custom lookup fields from lead to opportunity you can use relationship mapping 1:N Lead to Opportunity in CRM mapping.
Thanks.
Thanks for your detailed Answer, Aileen!! it was really helpful :)
We will be mostly considering Leads as projects that might turn into business for us, so we will not be treating it as a place for creating contacts/accounts. We key in all our customers in the Accounts/contacts Area.
So in this case what do you think of hiding the fields Company and Name (after making it optional) so as to avoid creating Contact and Account and keeping the fields Parent account for Lead' and 'Parent Contact for Lead' instead? what will happen if a relationship doesnt exist between the above two?
I also need to know the easiest way to map custom lookup fields from Lead to Opportunity
Hi Sameera,
Just additional info, Ben provided excellent answer and yes, you can customize the Lead, the form to include what fields you want to show.
And Vivekananda Kukkapalli explained you about the different associated with existing contact or key in a new contact.
When you create a Lead and you or users confused just think like this:
- If you think your new Lead is not from an existing contact nor from Account, then you should key in all info in section: Contact and Company and you don't associate this lead to any contact nor any account, which when you qualify, it will create three records: Contact, Account, Opportunity automatically.
- If you think the Lead is a contact that is a part of existing Account or Company, then you should not key in Company section, instead, you should associate or link this lead to the Existing Account.
For example in real practice: Your lead is Mr Luis Anderson, he is key person of a company, ABC Corp. But, you know that ABC Corp is your existing Account and this Mr Luis is not your existing contact.
Then you should not key in ABC Corp anymore in the Lead Form - Company,
but you should associate this Lead to an existing Account, because if you key in ABC Corp again and you don't associate it to an existing Account, once you qualify this Lead, it will create another new Contact (Mr Luis Anderson), another new Account (ABC Corp), and another new Opportunity (name of this opportunity is based on the Topic you key in in the Lead form.
So, imagine, you will create another ABC Corp record.
To avoid this, you need to link this account to the existing ABC Corp Account record.
- Same concept with Contact, if you think a Lead is actually the existing Contact, then you should associate the Lead to the existing Contact, so once you qualify, you will not create a duplicate or double same Contact.
For example: Mr Luis Anderson in September 2014 was your Lead from ABC Corp and qualified in mid of October 2014 as Contact from existing Account ABC Corp. Then, in the November 2014, you come again to a seminar, you met him again, but now you know that he is no longer working at ABC Corp, he works at Jet Corp now with different Opportunity and different Topic. So, you recognize him as existing Contact old friend but different Account, which Jet Corp is not your Account now, so you should key in the Company Information and then select Luis Anderson from the existing contact list and don't key in existing Account. Thus, when you qualify him, CRM will create new Opportunity under Luis Anderson name and Jet Corp as the Account name.
*But, the Luis Anderson will still in ABC Corp in your Contact Master, you need to manually update his Contact master record.
- So, if you think that your prospect is actually from the same Contact with the same Account but you think it is another opportunity, you need to associate to the existing Account and Existing Contact in order to only create Opportunity and avoid double record of same Account and same Contact.
For example, You meet Luis Anderson, he is still working at ABC Corp, last time you had deal with him for a Finance System Project, now you meet him again as ABC Corp key person with new prospect, that is CRM Project. So, what you do is you key in the topic to: CRM project and make sure you choose existing Account set to ABC Corp and existing Contact set to Luis Anderson.
Once you qualify, you will get new Opportunity record, but under existing Luis Anderson and ABC Corp, so no hassle.
Basically the Existing Contact and Account fields in CRM are intended to avoid creating duplicate Account or Contact, it will only create an Opportunity because the chance to win the prospect from Lead are different (can be CRM Project, ERP Project, Database Project, etc) but can come from existing Potential Customer. Of course you don't want to have multiple records of Account or Contact which they are definitely are same.
You want to avoid this hassle.
And, additional info, if you key in Existing Account but you key in Company Info in the Lead Form.
It will not create a new Account once you qualified.
- In above example, it will not create ABC Corp record, but it will create Luis Anderson as Contact and a new Opportunity under existing Account (Adventure Works).
Because, if you notice, the BPF in the Qualify stage is coming up after you save the record and then you can choose the existing record, it might be a good purpose.
- So, for example, you meet Luis Anderson, but you forget him or you don't know whether he does exist in the current database or not, then you just key in his Name and his Account Name in the Contact and Company Info in the Lead Form.
Once you confirmed he is an existing Contact, then you can link this lead to existing Contact and you confirmed that his company is also consider as an existing Account then you should link this Lead.
It can be good because sometimes in hurry, salesperson didn't remember his contact, he has plenty of data, and he cannot remember whether this contact person exists in the database or not, or if he is a new guy, he needs time to learn his current company Contacts, is the man whom I met today an existing contact from former salesperson or not.
Just let them key in to avoid any information loss, then later find out whether need to create a new Account or Contact or not.
So the key to create a new record of Contact or Account is the link of Existing Account or Contact.
Hope this helps!
Thanks.
Hi Sameera,
Thanks for using the forums.
Yes, you are correct the leads have the option to be associated with existing contact.
If you want to associate the lead to a new contact, just fill in the details in the lead and when it is qualified. CRM would automatically create a new contact record for you.
Did that answer your question?
You can customize leads to have the data you want to show on them
but generally leads are used in CRM as potential business which hasn't been qualified and doesn't have any contact details (e.g. accont or contact details)
Leads provide fields to put in contact and company information but they are only strings and do not lookup to existing contacts or accounts.
The reason these fields are here is when you qualified the lead and promote it to an opportunity, it will create the account/customer and contact information you have put in the lead.
If you have opportunities for existing customers I would add them directly as Opportunities and miss out the lead stage. It is quite common for many companies to not use the lead entity and only input opportunities because most of leads do not come to anything they aren't interested in logging that data.
Other companies use leads to see how many leads were converted to opportunities for promotions (conferences, marketing lists etc.).
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