Setting Up Lead Management

Your lead management setup depends on the lead conversion workflow you want to use and other features enabled in your account. Follow these basic steps to complete your setup:

1. Choose a Lead Conversion Workflow

2. Review Your Current Sales Setup

3. Determine Whether to Enable Additional Features

4. Complete Other Configuration for Lead Management

Choose a Lead Conversion Workflow

Decide how you want to handle lead conversion. NetSuite has two basic workflows:

• By Status Changes and Sales Transactions (B2C)

• Using the Lead Conversion feature (B2B)

For a review of the workflows, see Comparing Lead Conversion Workflows.

Regardless of the workflow you select, sales and marketing leadership needs to work closely with the NetSuite account administrator to establish the optimum configuration for your lead management solution.

Review Your Current Sales Setup

Lead management setup overlaps with general sales setup. This portion of the setup may already have been completed. See Setting Up SFA.

Specific elements of the sales setup that affect lead management include the following:

• Customer Statuses – Customer statuses describe a lead, prospect, or customer's standing in the sales cycle. For instructions to create customer statuses, see Customer Statuses.

• CRM Lists – This part of the sales setup determines the values that are available in various sales-related fields. For information, see CRM Lists.

Determine Whether to Enable Additional Features

Effective use of the lead conversion workflow you select may require additional features. If you decide you want to use additional features, work with your NetSuite administrator to have them enabled.

Additional features commonly used with lead management and links to their documentation are as follows:

• Lead Conversion – This feature is required to support the common B2B workflow. See Lead Conversion Using the Lead Conversion Feature.

• Opportunities and Estimates – These features include records (opportunities) and transactions (estimates) that give sales managers awareness into the pipeline and help sales representatives manage potential deals. See Opportunities and Estimates.

• Team Selling – This feature lets you associate sales transactions and customers with sales team. If you use Team Selling, make sure your sales teams, sales, rules, and sales territories are configured properly. For more information, see Team Selling, Sales Rules, and Sales Territories.

• Marketing Automation – This feature lets you create marketing campaigns to generate interest and online forms to capture information about leads. See Marketing Automation Overview.

Complete Other Configuration for Lead Management

The other configuration you need to complete depends on the lead conversion workflow you have chosen. The following table lists the additional configuration necessary for the B2B and B2C workflows.

B2B Using the Lead Conversion Feature

B2C Using Status Changes and Transactions

Set Default Lead Type to Individual. This setting is on the General Preferences page at Setup > Company > Preferences > General Preferences. Check or clear the Consider "Starts With" Matches in Lead Conversion box. Check this box if you want companies that begin with the same name as leads to be presented as possible duplicates. This setting is on the Sales Preferences page at Setup > Sales > Preferences > Sales Preferences. Map any custom fields on your lead records to custom fields on contact, opportunity, and task records. For information, see Mapping Custom Lead Fields.

Set default customer statues. The default statuses control lead and prospect conversion. To set default customer statuses, go to Setup > Sales > Preferences > Sales Preferences.

Related Topics

Lead Management

Lead Records

Lead Conversion

Performing a Mass Update on Customer Statuses

Assigning Leads

Lead Routing

Lead Notification Email

Lead Conversion Reports, Search, and KPIs

General Notices