Leads

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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:

Copy the members of the lead team to the team on the account, contact, and opportunity that are created or linked to the lead during the conversion process.
The team role and access level for the lead team members on an account, contact, or opportunity are determined as follows:
- When an existing record is used. The evaluator must specify the record access level that will be granted to the lead owner in the team on the linked account or contact. All other members of the lead team are given the record access level on the linked record that they have on the lead record. However, if any member of the lead team, including the lead owner, is already a member of the team on the linked record, then the user’s access level on the linked record remains unchanged. If any member of the team, including the lead owner, has a team role on the lead, then the user is given the same role on the linked record, unless the user already has a team role on the linked record, in which case the user’s role on the linked record remains unchanged.
- When a new record is created. The evaluator must specify the record access level that will be granted to the lead owner in the team on the new record. Other members of the lead team are given the record access level on the new record that they have on the lead record. If any member of the team, including the lead owner, has a team role on the lead, then the user is given the same role on the new record.
  For information about the ownership of the new records, see Ownership of Records Created During Lead Conversion in this topic.
  
  NOTE: If the team role that is assigned to a team member on the lead is not available for the record type of the linked record, then the Team Role field is left blank for that user on the linked record.
Link the lead’s associated custom object records to the account, contact, and opportunity that are created or linked to the lead during the conversion process.

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	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	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.


Published 6/21/2021	Copyright © 2005, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates. Legal Notices.