Contact workflow?

**joshua** · 2006-01-09, 02:41 PM

Someone asked me this question today, and I didn't have a good answer for them.

What kind of workflow exists in Sugar for "promoting" contacts? Say someone starts as a "Opportunity", then expresses interest and becomes a "Lead", then actually purchases from us and becomes an Contact/Account. What's the recommended/intended workflow for this kind of thing?

longreach · 2006-01-09, 03:09 PM

Campaign Target ==> Lead ==> Opportunity/Contact/Account ==> potentially back to Target

**joshua** · 2006-01-23, 08:47 PM

Right, that's kinda what we thought.

How does one perform these "upgrades" within Sugar, though?

**daryll** · 2006-01-23, 10:01 PM

Originally Posted by joshua

Right, that's kinda what we thought.

How does one perform these "upgrades" within Sugar, though?

I've never used the campaign. I've assumed that's for basically cold contacts. You'd get some mailing list, phone list, or something and send stuff out. If someone can expand on comapaigns I'd like to hear it.

Leads I've used. We got them from a trade show. We imported them in bulk. Then when I've made more contact with them I promoted them to contacts. Once you open a lead there's a button that converts it to a contact. You get the chance to create an account and modify the information from the lead. Then they disappear out of the leads list.

Once I've got them as an account and contact and have a chance to talk to them, I decide if they are an opportunity. I assign a dollar value and state for their purchase. I also schedule my next call on the calendar.

Each time I call them I leave a note on the call and schedule the next time to try to call them back. They usually sit in that state a really long time.

There is a bug in SugarCRM 4.0 that notes get lost when you change the call they're attached to, which is a major problem for me tracking a history with a contact. So be warned about that. It is supposedly fixed in 4.0.1 though, so hopefully that'll be out real soon.

Once a contact is in, I don't see a good way to push it back to being a lead. What I've done is removed the opportunity (if it had one) and changed it to type "prospect" Then I attach a note about what happened. That way I can at least look through the list of contacts for "prospects" and see who to go back to and contact again.