In this article, you'll learn how setting the lead status value in Qualified results in either the creation of a lead record in Salesforce, or the creation and conversion of that lead record into corresponding account, contact, and opportunity records in Salesforce.
But first, we'll take a second to explain the often confusing concept of the Salesforce data model and the basics of Salesforce Lead conversion. What we'll cover:
- The core Salesforce data model explained
- What is Salesforce Lead conversion?
- Creating Salesforce Leads from Qualified
The Core Salesforce Data Model Explained
Salesforce is a CRM system that helps sales reps track information about their contacts (people that you're trying to sell to), accounts (the companies that they work for), and opportunities (the deals you're trying to close). These three data objects are the foundation of Salesforce and have existed for decades.
When Salesforce recognized the need to track a prospect that was engaged *before* the beginning of a sales cycle (what most people call a lead), they chose to create a new object: leads.
Leads are typically managed and tracked by the marketing team, and are a convenient way of representing the information you have about a person before they are qualified to engage in a sales cycle.
What is Salesforce Lead Conversion?
When a lead is deemed qualified by your sales or marketing team, the data on the Salesforce lead record gets "converted" into three new records, one for the contact (person), one for an account (company), and one for an opportunity (sales deal). Your company can configure Salesforce to convert leads in any custom manner, but the standard lead conversion process looks like this:
Creating Leads from Qualified
It was important to first cover the Salesforce data model and the lead conversion process because it helps to convey how, and why, you might choose to create leads from Qualified.
If one of your sales reps has an initial conversation with an inbound lead, and needs to follow up later to get additional information or further qualify that lead, they can create the lead record in Salesforce with a lead status that indicates that additional qualification is needed. The lead might have a status value of "Working" to indicate that more work is needed before passing the lead over to the sales team or before it is appropriate to start working the sales opportunity.
Summary
In this article, you've learned how setting the lead status value in Qualified results in either the creation of a lead record in Salesforce or the creation and conversion of that lead record into the corresponding account, contact, and opportunity records in Salesforce. We've covered the basics of the Salesforce data model and how lead conversion works in Salesforce.