Marketing > Leads
Leads
Use the Leads pages to create, update, and evaluate leads. A lead is a person who has indicated an interest in your products or services.
You can enter leads manually, or they can be assigned to you. You can follow up assigned leads to determine if they will eventually generate revenue for the company. Creating a lead record is a quick way to gather new customer information. In one record you can enter details about the company, the person, and the business interest, instead of creating four different records for an account, a contact, a deal registration, and an opportunity.
A lead moves through the lead management process in the following sequence of stages: evaluating, qualifying, and converting to an opportunity or deal registration. Instead of qualifying a lead, you might remove it by archiving it. Instead of converting a qualified lead to an opportunity or deal registration, you might reject it. The rest of this topic explains the stages in more detail.
Evaluating Leads
During evaluation, the person evaluating the lead performs a number of ongoing activities:
- Calls, emails, or visits the contact to exchange information.
- Updates specific information about the lead with more accurate and newly discovered information.
- Creates, tracks, and completes activities regarding the lead.
- Logs notes regarding the interaction.
- (Optional but recommended) Links the lead to an account and a contact, which has these advantages:
- The user assigned to the account or contact (who may or may not also be the user assigned to the lead) can view the lead during the evaluation process, because it will appear in the Account and Contact pages.
- The lead owner can access additional information about the account or contact by clicking a link.
- The lead owner can enter more details than can typically be stored with a lead, such as additional contacts at the account, ship to address, and so on.
- If the lead is converted to an opportunity or deal registration, the existing account and contact links can speed up that process.
Qualifying Leads
The qualification process helps the evaluator to gather enough information to determine which leads to pursue further. When the evaluator determines that a lead has some potential for generating revenue, the evaluator qualifies the lead. The system then checks to make sure that certain critical fields contain data. If the criteria have been met, the lead is marked as qualified, and becomes visible to the sales person as a newly qualified lead.
Qualifying leads accurately helps your company to spend more time working on high-potential business deals. Company administrators can set up Lead Qualification scripts to help evaluators to qualify leads accurately and consistently. (For information on setting up assessment scripts, see Setting Up Assessment Scripts).
Archiving Leads
Alternatively, if the lead is considered to have no value to the company, then the evaluator can archive the lead. The system then removes the lead from the lead management process.
TIP: To sort archived leads, create a new list called Archived Leads. For more information on creating lists, see Creating and Refining Lists.
Converting Leads to Opportunities or Deal Registrations
Leads can be converted to contacts, and optionally to accounts, opportunities, and deal registrations using the Convert Lead page. The Convert Lead page contains lead conversion options as specified in the Lead Conversion layout that is applicable to the user role. If a lead has enough potential value, the evaluator can convert it to an opportunity or a deal registration, so long as a lead conversion layout has all lead conversion options enabled. The system prompts the evaluator for an account to link to the lead, a contact at that account to link to the lead, and an opportunity or deal registration to link to the lead.
Oracle CRM On Demand then creates a new opportunity or deal registration and removes the lead from active evaluation (although it can still be viewed if desired).
If your administrator adds the relevant options to the lead conversion layout, then the evaluator can also do the following when converting a lead:
What Happens During Conversion
In the standard application, some information from the lead record is carried over to the relevant fields in the account, contact, opportunity, and deal registration records that are created or linked to the lead during the conversion process. The following table shows an example of how the fields can be mapped among the records. Some of the fields shown in this table are mapped by default, while other fields are not. Your company administrator can determine how the lead fields are mapped for your company. For information about mapping fields for lead conversion, see Mapping Additional Fields During Lead Conversion.
Lead
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Account
|
Opportunity
|
Contact
|
Deal Registration
|
Address
|
Billing Address
|
Not applicable
|
Contact Address
|
Deal Address
|
Annual Revenues
|
Annual Revenues
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Approximate Income
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Total Income
|
Not applicable
|
Associated Company
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Associated Company
|
Associated Contact
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Associated Contact
|
Campaign
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Source Campaign
NOTE: If the account is created through the lead conversion process, this field is automatically populated from the Campaign field on the lead record. If the account is created by a user, the user can enter the information in this field.
|
Source Campaign
NOTE: If the opportunity is created through the lead conversion process, this field is automatically populated from the Campaign field on the lead record. If the opportunity is created by a user, the user can enter the information in this field.
|
Source Campaign
NOTE: If the contact is created through the lead conversion process, this field is automatically populated from the Campaign field on the lead record. If the contact is created by a user, the user can enter the information in this field.
|
Not applicable
|
Cellular Phone #
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Cellular Phone #
|
Cell Phone
|
City
|
Billing City Shipping City
|
Not applicable
|
Primary City
|
City (of Deal Address)
|
Company
|
Account Name
|
Account
|
Account
|
Company Name
|
Country
|
Billing Country Shipping Country
|
Not applicable
|
Primary Country
|
Country
|
Date of Birth
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Date of Birth
|
Not applicable
|
Description
|
Not applicable
|
Description
|
Not applicable
|
Justification
|
Email
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Email
|
Email
|
Estimated Close Date
|
Not applicable
|
Close Date
|
Not applicable
|
Close Date
|
First Name
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
First Name
|
Not applicable
|
Industry
|
Industry
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Job Title
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Job Title
|
Not applicable
|
Last Name
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Last Name
|
Not applicable
|
Lead Currency
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Deal Currency
|
Lead Owner
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Lead Type
|
Account Type
|
Not applicable
|
Contact Type
|
Not applicable
|
Mr./Ms.
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Mr./Ms
|
Not applicable
|
Never Email
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Never Email
|
Not applicable
|
Next Step
|
Not applicable
|
Next Step
|
Not applicable
|
Next Step
|
Number of Employees
|
Number of Employees
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Originating Partner
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Originating Partner
|
Potential Revenue
|
Not applicable
|
Revenue
|
Not applicable
|
Deal Size
|
Primary Phone #
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Work Phone #
|
Telephone #
|
Principal Partner
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Principal Partner
|
Product Interest
|
Not applicable
|
Opportunity Name becomes: Product Interest (Contact Full Name)
|
Not applicable
|
Product Interest
|
Profession
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Profession
|
Not applicable
|
Qualified Date
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Qualified Date
|
Not applicable
|
Rating
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Referred by
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Referred by
|
Not applicable
|
Source
|
Not applicable
|
Lead Source
|
Lead Source
|
Not applicable
|
State/Province
|
Billing State/Province Shipping State/Province
|
Not applicable
|
Primary State/Province
|
State (of Deal Address)
|
Website
|
Web Site
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Work Fax #
|
Not applicable
|
Not applicable
|
Work Fax #
|
Not applicable
|
Zip/Postal Code
|
Billing Zip Code Shipping Zip Code
|
Not applicable
|
Primary Zip/Postal Code
|
Zip (of Deal Address)
|
Additionally, some fields show different values as a result of the lead conversion process. The following table lists the new values.
|
|
This record/field
|
Changes to this value
|
Lead record
|
Status
|
Converted
|
Account record
|
Owner
|
User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Records Created During Lead Conversion.
|
Opportunity record
|
Status
|
Pending
|
Sales Stage
|
Building Vision
|
Probability
|
50%
|
Owner
|
User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Records Created During Lead Conversion.
|
Contact record
|
Owner
|
User converting the lead. See the following section, Ownership of Records Created During Lead Conversion.
|
Deal Registration Record
|
Name
|
Product Interest on the lead. You can override this field.
|
Type
|
Standard
|
Submission Status
|
Not Submitted.
|
Ownership of Records Created During Lead Conversion
In the standard application, the following happens when the lead is converted:
- If the Sales Person field on the lead is populated, then the sales person becomes the owner of any new records that are created during the conversion.
- If the Sales Person field on the lead is not populated, then the user converting the lead becomes the owner of any new records that are created during the conversion.
However, the company administrator can change this behavior using the Lead Conversion Mapping feature. For more information, see Mapping Additional Fields During Lead Conversion.
Rejecting Qualified Leads
Qualified leads can also be rejected. This is typically done in organizations where the person or group evaluating leads is different from the sales people who take qualified leads and convert them into revenue. In those organizations, the sales person assigned to a qualified lead may determine that the lead is not as valuable as the evaluator had indicated.
When rejecting a lead, the sales person must specify a Reject Code for the rejection and can optionally specify the Reject Reason as well. If the Reject Code selected is Other, the Reject Reason becomes a required field. The system records that a rejection occurred, who rejected it, and why it was rejected.
The sales person may also choose to have the lead reassigned as part of the rejection. Depending on the company’s policies, the lead may be reassigned to a manager for follow-up, or it may go back to the original evaluator for further assessment.
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