Leads, Opportunities and Accounts?

[Linnane]

Hi,

I’m new to Sugar and have some small experience with CRM (which can be a dangerous thing I know). I want to get started with Sugar (C.E.). All going well I imagine we’ll be upgrading to pro version but before all that I was hoping someone could help me with my understanding of the product or direct me to a source (not whole books please) where I can polish my bare knowledge of Sugar and CRM in general.


I want to treat individuals as Accounts – Not a problem I presume?

On 1st contact with the individual a “Lead” will be created. After a few hoops have been jumped though and I feel that this is a worthwhile lead and they have requested some service/product in particular I’ll convert the lead to an “Opportunity”. Throughout the sales process/pipeline the opportunity record will have different statuses set, denoting the stage within the cycle. At the completion of this (sales) process the opportunity will become an “Account”. Associated to the “Account” will be a record of the paid for service/product, this record may include attached documents (application forms / invoices / receipts / excreta).

If the individual (“Account”) then requests a second service/product or perhaps a renewal of the initial transaction then a new opportunity will be created, this opportunity will be associated to the original account. No Lead will be created, as an Account already exists. If this request is successfully concluded to a transaction, then a second record will be associated at account level and again this record may or may not include attached documents.

The question I suppose is: Is the above the correct way to view “Leads”, ”Opportunities” and “Accounts” and the transitions between them. Or do I have some fundamentals of CRM (SugarCRM) incorrect, and if so what is the correct design? In particular I am very unsure about the customers second iteration whereby I am suggesting that no Lead record should be created, as the account already exists. Is this the standard practice? If not how is the process normally viewed?

Any help / direction would be greatly appreciated.

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[kinshibuya]

hI!
Well in your case you're thinking of account as a Contract, is that correct?
Here in my company we use Account as the client, lead as a hint of a new sales, opportunity is the real possibility of a sales, the contract as the closed sale and invoices and products as payment method of the closed sale.
But i guess you can make sugar fit your needs, we sure did our way so that sugar could fit 100% in our business
Hope it helps.

[dtokeefe]

Hi Linnane,

You've got it right. Leads -> Accounts -> Opportunities. Follow up Opportunities are related to the Account. No need to create a new Lead.

A Lead is a person you might be able to do business with. You qualify Leads to determine if they should be converted. Qualification considers:

1. Intent - do they understand and want to buy my product or service?
2. Timeframe - is their intention to buy within my reasonable timeframe? For some companies, the intent to buy one year from now means the Lead cannot be converted yet. For others, that's their normal sales cycle.
3. Budget - given their intent and timeframe, do they understand my offer and have the budget to buy?

You might need a naming convention to keep the Account name unique and understandable. You also might want to use Account to represent Family and Contact to represent Person (Family Member). This could be more flexible going forward.

Books: http://www.amazon.com/Implementing-S.../dp/190481168X

Feel free to contact me on Skype (dtokeefe) to discuss your project.

Best regards,

David