Leads vs. Accounts vs. Customers

[Ascone]

In our sales cycle our prospect will become a Account only if we won the sale.
Till we close the sale, it's only a prospect.
therefore we need to convert leads to opportunities without creating a Account.


Is it possible to facilitate this of give us a work-a-round.

Unless there is a way to designate an account as a customer?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

[Oracledarren]

Hi,

I dont know of any work around for a straight facilitation. But you could define a custom field in admin to use as your account number.

By the sounds of what you say that should do the trick

[mrmilk]

In our sales cycle our prospect will become a Account only if we won the sale.
Till we close the sale, it's only a prospect.
therefore we need to convert leads to opportunities without creating a Account.


Is it possible to facilitate this of give us a work-a-round.

Unless there is a way to designate an account as a customer?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

This approach is not uncommon. Just think of an account as a "company". Use the field account type to set "Prospect", "Customer", etc. So, you will have a database with many companies, some will be suppliers, some (hopefully most) customers and some "prospects".

You can even "rename" the whole module "Accounts" to "Companies" if that makes more sense to you. You'll be able to search by account type (in this case, "company type") and then see the "real" accounts (customers).

[longreach]

Nice thinking - good answer!

[Ascone]

thanks folks, i apprecaiate all of the help and comments. I will give it a shot. thanks again.
-ascone