Sales and Marketing Applications
Lead to cash
The sales lifecycle is a chain of objects. Leads capture unqualified interest and arrive via Web-to-Lead, manual entry, or import, and are worked through lead statuses. Conversion creates up to three records - Account, Contact, and Opportunity - and the lead becomes read-only. Custom lead fields carry over only where a lead field mapping exists, so an unmapped custom field silently disappears at conversion. Deleting a converted lead does not delete the account, contact, or opportunity.
Campaigns hold campaign members (leads and contacts) with member statuses, and campaign influence attributes revenue. Opportunities use stages, a sales process per record type, probability, and forecast category. Products link to price books through price book entries, and opportunity line items are added from a price book - an opportunity can carry an amount with no products at all.
Traps
- Lead and case assignment rules: only one rule per object can be active at a time, and entry order matters.
- Auto-response rules for leads: several can be active and are evaluated in order, first match wins.
- Forecast category versus stage: forecasts roll up by forecast category, which maps to a stage but can diverge.
- Converting a lead that matches an existing account or contact may merge into those records instead of creating new ones.
Worked example
A rep converts a lead and complains the new opportunity has no products and a zero amount. Conversion does not create opportunity products or price book entries, and the amount comes across only if that field is mapped. Map it, or have the rep add products and let the amount roll up from line items.
Rule of thumb: if a value is missing after conversion, look at the field mapping first.