Leads, opportunities, and the sales process

A lead is an unqualified prospect. Converting it creates an account, a contact, and optionally an opportunity. Opportunities move through stages defined by a sales process, and products from a price book give them their amount.

Leads and conversion

• Lead: A person or company that might buy, not yet qualified. Leads live apart from accounts and contacts until they are converted.
• Conversion: Creates (or matches to existing) an account and contact, and optionally an opportunity. The lead becomes read-only and marked converted.
• Lead field mapping: Custom lead fields carry over only if you map them to account, contact, or opportunity fields. Standard fields map automatically.
• Lead status: Tracks progress. At least one status value must be marked Converted, and a lead process (per record type) decides which values are available.

Opportunities and sales processes

• Stages: Each stage value has a default probability, a type (open, closed won, or closed lost), and a forecast category.
• Sales process: The subset of stage values a group uses. Combine it with an opportunity record type so new business and renewals follow different stages.
• Path: A visual bar across the top of a record that shows the current stage, with key fields and guidance for success at each step. Works for leads, opportunities, cases, and custom objects.
• Opportunity contact roles: Record which contacts take part in a deal and their role, such as decision maker or evaluator.
• Opportunity teams: Let several users work an opportunity with defined roles and access levels.

Products, price books, and quotes

• Products: The items or services you sell. A product must be active, and have a price in a price book, before it can be added to an opportunity.
• Standard price book: Holds the standard price for every product. A product needs a standard price before it can be added to a custom price book.
• Custom price books: Different prices for different markets or customer tiers. An opportunity uses one price book at a time.
• Opportunity products: Line items with quantity, sales price, and discount. When an opportunity has products, its Amount is the sum of the line items.
• Quotes: Snapshots of an opportunity's products and prices that can be turned into a PDF and sent. One quote can be synced back to the opportunity at a time.