lead vs contact vs account vs opportunity

[riprod]

I'm having a hard time finding the info that I need quickly.

What exactly is the difference lead, contact, account and opportunity ? Can't they be consolidated into one entity.
If I convert a lead to a contact or opportunity and then I send an email from the lead page. If I go to the account or opportunity page, it is not in the history.

The only place that seams to show all the history from everywhere is the 'contact' page. Is it best to manage everything from there ?

I guess I just understand the reasoning for having 4 different areas with virtually the same info. Is there a video walkthrough of this somewhere.

thanks

[eNick]

Hi,

They have many similar properties, to provide maximum flexibility. But they are subtly different in terms of behaviour and most importantly in how they relate.

An account is generally an organisation with whom you do business. Let's say ABC Inc.

Now what if you have two people at ABC Inc. who buy from you? Well then that's two different contacts.

But now what if those contacts buy from you more than once? Well each of those repeat bits of business is an opportunity.

Which, leaves leads. They're people you haven't yet qualified. So for example, there's a message on the answer phone saying "Please call Mr X, I might want to buy something". Well, that's not really an opportunity yet. You don't even know what he wants to buy. You might not sell it. Or maybe it's someone new form an existing account. Fact is you just don't know till you speak to them. So, it's a little early to call it an opportunity. So, leads tend to be treated different so they don't clutter everything up.

If you merged all these elements, then things would get messy very quickly.

For a good overview of the key concepts of CRM, as they relate to Sugar, look at this tutorial...

http://www.thesugarrefinery.com/what-is-crm.html

Nick

[riprod]

That was a fantastic reply and totally cleared things up for me. Thank you!
So really, once I have an account, I should relate everything to that. Contacts, Opportunities etc.

Last question. when I send a reply email to lead, before it is an account. Then when I convert it to an account, I do not see the history (including that email). Is there a way to see ALL the history of an account and anything to do with that account from the Accounts page.

thanks

[eNick]

I find generally, emails I send to a lead - and which get recorded on the lead - do end up on the account's History when I convert.

However, if they don't get associated to the lead, then they don't. Sometimes, if I just hit "reply" they don't get auto-associated to the lead (and hence don't end up on the account).

[pcarew]

>"..For a good overview of the key concepts of CRM, as they relate to Sugar, look at this tutorial...
> http://www.thesugarrefinery.com/what-is-crm.html"


This website/page seems to be infected with a virus/Trojan:
JS:ScriptPE-inf [Trj]

See this page for more explanation: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?PHP...7840#msg367840

[eNick]

This website/page seems to be infected with a virus/Trojan:

The site is *not* infected. It was a false positive caused by some commented out javascript which has now been removed.

[pcarew]

Thanks for checking.
Removing whatever JS you removed, did the trick. It is no longer reporting a problem.

I read through your tutorial and found it useful and enlightening.

Thank you.

[BubbaFL]

eNick - thanks for posting - your information was helpful.

Here's a related contact vs account question - what if some clients are businesses while others are individuals?

Should individuals who are independent clients of a company be set up as an account AND a contact, or just as one of the two?

Also, what is the best way to manage vendor (upstream) relationships? Calling a vendor an "account" doesn't really seem appropriate.

Thanks!

Bubba

[susiewilliams]

One suggestion would be to take a clue from your finance system... how do you set up the entities you do business with in that system? Are they all accounts, with an Account Type field to denote whether they're a customer, vendor, or something else? You likely have solved this business dilemma already in that system so extend the answer to this system.

[BubbaFL]

Susie,

Thanks for the quick reply!

Right now all of our contacts are stored in a hierarchy of public folders in outlook [exchange] - one folder for each marketer's clients; each marketer has a subfolder for assigned leads that are not yet "clients", and a few other folders to keep our "upstream" contacts separate from "downstream" ones.

Outlook has fields for first name / last name / company name in every record, so the individuals and small companies are listed in a markter's main folder, while the very large organizations (hundreds to thousands of contacts we deal with) have their own folder.

Any ideas on the best way to arrange all of this information in Sugar? I've already set up roles so marketers only see their assigned accounts/contacts/leads.

Thanks for your guidance!