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Marketing > Leads > Managing Leads > Converting Leads to Accounts, Contacts, Deal Registrations, or Opportunities

Converting Leads to Accounts, Contacts, Deal Registrations, or Opportunities

If your user role has the appropriate setup, you can create account, contact, deal registration, and opportunity records, or copy lead information to existing records by converting the lead record. Depending on your company’s settings, the new opportunity record can include information that affects revenue calculations. For further information about the conversion process and its impact on fields and values, see What Happens During Conversion in Leads.

NOTE: Normally, you convert leads to opportunities that have previously been qualified. See Qualifying Leads.

The procedure in this section describes the steps for these two scenarios:

Scenario 1. You have new leads resulting from a campaign your company conducted. As part of each lead record, you have a person’s name along with their company name. You now want to create a new contact, a new account, and, potentially, a new opportunity record using information from the lead.

Scenario 2. You run a campaign targeted at existing accounts and contacts. Some leads are generated that you now want to convert to opportunities.

Before you begin. To perform this procedure, your user role and access profile settings must be set up as described in Access Profile and Role Settings for Converting Leads. The Convert Lead page shows only the conversion options that are available to your user role, according to the lead conversion layout that has been selected for the role. If a lead conversion layout has not been selected for the role, the default lead conversion layout applies.

To convert a lead to an account, contact, deal registration, or opportunity

1. Select the lead you want to convert.

   For instructions on selecting leads, see Finding Records.

2. On the Lead Detail page, click Convert.
3. On the Convert Lead page, do one of the following:
   • To create new account and contact records for this lead (Scenario 1), select the Auto-create New Account and Auto-create New Contact options.

     In the Account section, the Company field for the lead appears in the Account Name field by default. In the Contact section, the First Name and Last Name for the lead appear by default.

   • To create a new opportunity and link the opportunity to an existing account and contact, select the Use Existing Account and Use Existing Contact options.

     If the lead record has an associated account, this account appears in the Associated Account field. If the lead record has an associated contact, this contact appears in the Associated Contact field.

   • To link the lead to a different account or contact, click the Lookup icon next to the Associated Account or Associated Contact fields and select another account and contact. Make sure the proper names appear in the Associated Account and Associated Contact fields and that the Use Existing Account and Use Existing Contact option buttons are selected.
4. (Optional) To convert the lead to an opportunity, select the Auto-Create New Opportunity option and complete the fields.

   NOTE: The first name and last name from the lead record appear in the Associated Opportunity field by default, and you can edit this field. In the standard application, the Revenue, Close Date, Next Step, and Description fields also appear in the Opportunity section of the Convert Lead page. You can edit these fields here, and their values are carried into the opportunity record. Depending on how your administrator sets up the layout for the Convert Lead page, you might see different fields.

5. If you want to copy the lead team to the team on the account, contact, or opportunity, do the following:
   1. Select the Copy Lead Team check box in the appropriate section of the page. For example, if you want to copy the lead team to the new opportunity, then select the Copy Lead Team check box in the Opportunity section of the page.
   2. Choose the record access level that you want to grant to the lead owner in the appropriate section of the page. For example, if you selected the Copy Lead Team check box in the Opportunity section of the page, then in the Lead Owner Record Access in Opportunity Team field, choose the record access level that you want to grant to the lead owner on the new opportunity.

      NOTE: Your administrator can enable team inheritance for the Contact and Opportunity record types by selecting the Enable Parent Team Inheritance for Contact check box and the Enable Parent Team Inheritance for Opportunity check box on the Company Profile page. If team inheritance is enabled for the Contact or Opportunity record type, then the contact or opportunity team automatically inherits the team members of the account that is linked to the lead during the lead conversion, even if the Copy Lead Team check box is not selected in the Contact or Opportunity section of the Convert Lead page.

6. To associate the lead’s associated records of a given custom object record type with the account, contact, or opportunity, select the check box to associate that custom object record type in the appropriate section of the page.

   NOTE: Your administrator determines which Custom Object record types can be associated with the records, by making the relevant options available when setting up the layout for the Convert Lead page.

7. (Optional) To convert the lead to a deal registration, select the Auto-Create Deal Registration option and complete the fields.

   NOTE: The values of the Product Interest field and the Principal Partner Account field from the lead record appear in the Deal Registration Name field and Principal Partner Account field respectively by default, and you can edit these fields. In the standard application, the Revenue, Close Date, Next Step, and Description fields also appear in the Deal Registration section of the Convert Lead page. You can edit these fields here, and their values are carried into the deal registration record. Depending on how your administrator sets up the layout for the Convert Lead page, you might see different fields.

8. To convert the lead, click Save.

When the conversion is completed:

• The Lead Detail page appears again with these values, most based on the selections you made on the Convert Lead page:
  • The Status field for the lead is Converted.
  • The Associated Account and Associated Contact field values are the same as the ones that were on the Convert Lead page.
  • If you converted the lead to an opportunity, the Associated Opportunity field value is the same as the new opportunity name that was on the Convert Lead page.
  • If you converted the lead to an opportunity, the new opportunity record created from the conversion process has the converted lead linked to the opportunity record.
  • If you converted the lead to a deal registration, the Associated Deal Registration field value is the same as the new deal registration name that you specified on the Convert Lead page.
  • If you converted the lead to a deal registration, the new deal registration record created from the conversion process is also linked to the converted lead.
• If you converted the lead to an opportunity (Step 4) or deal registration (Step 7), the new opportunity or deal registration record inherits some field values from the lead.
• You can still view the lead record, but the business processes shift to the appropriate opportunity or deal registration record.

NOTE: You can convert the same lead to an account or contact multiple times, but you can only convert a lead to a deal registration or opportunity once. If you have converted a lead to a deal registration or opportunity, you cannot later convert it to a different deal registration or opportunity. However, a lead that has been converted to a deal registration can be re-converted to a different account or contact.