1. Qualifying a Lead
Leads represent potential customers that can be
qualified or disqualified based on criteria set by your organization.
After you work with a lead record and determine whether or not the
potential customer fits your lead qualification criteria, you convert the lead. When you convert the lead, you specify whether or not the lead is qualified or disqualified.
When you qualify the lead, you create one or more of the following record types: Account, Contact, or Opportunity.
Your business process
should dictate which of the records to create. For example, if your
organization sells to businesses, you will probably want to create both
an account and a contact. If your organization sells to individual
consumers, you might not want to create an account. Likewise, you might
not always create an opportunity when you qualify
a lead. You might determine that a lead fits your qualification
criteria but that an immediate sales opportunity does not exist.
In addition to creating a
new opportunity, account, and contact all linked together, you can also
convert a lead to a new opportunity that will be linked to an existing
customer record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You might want to do this if a
matching account or contact already exists in your Microsoft Dynamics
CRM database.
When you qualify a lead, you
can select a check box to open the newly created records, which will
open the new account, contact, or opportunity records created during the
lead conversion process so that you can work with them right away,
saving yourself a few clicks.
Tip:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
will populate data fields in the account, contact, and opportunity
records you create from a qualified lead, based on the mapped data
fields.
In this exercise, you will convert a lead as qualified and create a new account, contact, and opportunity.
Note:
SET UP
Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft
Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You
need the Mike Snyder lead you created in the previous exercise.
Open the Mike Snyder lead you created in the previous exercise.
On the ribbon, click the Qualify button. A new dialog box opens.
Select the check boxes next to Account, Contact, and Opportunity.
Select the Open newly created records check box.
Click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM closes out the lead and creates three new records in new windows.
2. Disqualifying a Lead
Not every lead will meet your qualification criteria, so you will need to disqualify leads from time to time. Disqualifying
a lead does not delete the record from your system. Instead, it
deactivates the lead to indicate that no one needs to follow up with it.
Likewise, converting a lead as qualified does not delete the record; it
deactivates the lead record and creates an Account, Contact, or
Opportunity record for further follow-up.
Tip:
Converting a lead to
Qualified or Disqualified status does not delete the lead record;
rather, it deactivates the record so that it no longer appears in
anyone’s active leads list.
When you disqualify a lead, you
can select a reason to indicate why you decided to disqualify the
record. Again, your administrator can customize the disqualification
reasons, but the default values include Lost, Cannot Contact, No Longer
Interested, and Canceled.
Just as recording a lead source provides valuable sales and marketing data, recording a disqualification
reason also provides data that you can analyze to optimize your sales
and marketing processes. Cross-referencing the lead source data with the
disqualification data can provide valuable insights. For example, you
could discover that your sales team disqualified 50 percent of the leads
from a purchased list because of invalid contact information. Sales and
marketing managers can use this information to make educated purchases
of future lists, or perhaps stop purchasing lists altogether. To obtain
this kind of insight, each sales representative must accurately record
the disqualification reasons.
In this exercise, you will create a lead and disqualify it.
Note:
SET UP
Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft
Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
In the application area, click Sales.
In the application navigation pane, click the arrow on the Leads link, and then click New on the submenu that appears. A blank lead record opens.
In the Topic field, enter Lead to Disqualify – Mike Snyder.
In the First Name field, enter Mike.
In the Last Name field, enter Snyder.
In the Company Name field, enter Sonoma Partners.
Scroll down the form to the Details group. In the Lead Information section, click the arrow in the Lead Source list. Select Web.
On the ribbon, click the Save button.
On the ribbon, click the Qualify button to open the Convert Lead dialog box.
Click the arrow in the Status list, and select Cannot Contact.
Click OK to update the lead’s status to Disqualified and mark it inactive.
