Salesforce Leads are a great way to track prospective business opportunities. More specifically a Lead is one person. This is different from an Account because an Account is an entire company that can have several Contacts associated with it. Salesforce Leads are not the same as Salesforce Contacts. While Contacts are also individuals they are current or past business relationships. Another unique quality about Salesforce Leads is that they are all separate. There is no way to associate several leads at the same company with each other.
Marketing Perspective
Leads can help you keep track of where new business comes from. Think of Leads as the start of the sales cycle. This is the time that you will start qualifying the lead and deciding if they are a fit for your company. Leads can be a great tool to track where new business comes from. Do you know where most of your new business originates from? Is it Dreamforce, Email marketing, Salesforce user groups, word of mouth, or your website? As long as your getting new business, you might wonder why should you care where it comes from? Because its important to understand your business funnel so that you can keep replenishing it with new opportunities and focus your marketing budget where it has the most impact.
Tips for using Salesforce Leads
- Assign a Lead status: open, contacted, qualified, unqualified
- Assign a Lead rating: hot, warm, cold
- Keep track of all contact points. Log calls, send emails from Salesforce, and attach any meeting notes to the Lead.
- Leads are temporary. Once qualified convert to Contact, Account and Opportunity
- Keep your Leads clean. You may get a good amount of spam Leads from your website contact form. Delete anything that looks like: Rolex Very Cheap !!!!****###@gmail.com. You wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity because you didn’t see it in the clutter.
