Adding and Managing Leads in Salesforce

You may find yourself gathering contacts at events, like trade shows for healthcare providers. Imagine you've collected several business cards from representatives of hospitals and nursing homes. The next step is to enter these as leads in Salesforce to keep track of each.

Adding a New Lead

To add a new lead:

• Navigate to the Sales tab;
• Select the Leads option;
• Click New to open a blank lead form;
• Fill out everything you know.

The only REQUIRED fields in this form are Name, Company, and Lead Status. Once you've filled in the details, you have two options:

• Save and New: this will save the current lead and open a new form to input another, which is convenient if you're entering multiple leads;
• Save: this option saves your current lead and opens their details. If you've already input multiple leads, it will open the last lead you entered.

Viewing and Tracking Lead Status

Once a lead is saved, you can view it in the lead database. Each lead follows a defined path in Salesforce, moving through stages as interactions progress. Here are the standard lead statuses you'll see:

• New: the initial stage for a fresh lead;
• Contacted: when initial outreach has been made. If you had really gathered this info at a business gathering, you might want to enter each as "Contacted";
• Nurturing: for leads that require ongoing engagement to open up or commit;
• Unqualified: if the lead is deemed not suitable or uninterested;
• Converted: when the lead shows strong potential to move down the sales funnel.

In this process, converted has a specific meaning in Salesforce. While it doesn't necessarily mean a purchase was made, it does indicate that the lead has moved from a 'lead' to a confirmed 'contact'.

Converting a Lead

When you determine a lead is ready to move forward, click the Convert button. In Salesforce, converting a lead typically creates three new files:

• Account: a record of the organization or business;
• Contact: information for the individual within that organization;
• Opportunity (optional): a potential business opportunity, which you can select to include or exclude as needed.

This conversion marks an important step in the sales process, helping EcoMarket Deliveries build a structured database of qualified contacts, accounts, and potential revenue opportunities.

In the next chapter, we'll dive deeper into the distinctions between leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities to clarify each role in the Salesforce ecosystem.