Looking for strategy help-- getting started

[bbowens]

Hi, I'm a sole proprieter and I'm getting started with SugarCRM. I don't have any clients yet, so any additions to the database are either for referral to other prospects, direct prospects, or just names of people (peers, etc.). I had planned on making entries and immediately classifying them based on the above mentioned info. Ideally, I'd like to classify even further in order to sort into lists for follow-up (ie, some peers are good for referrals, some not).

I've read through the documentation, and I'm not quite sure which module to use at this point. It appears that the Contacts is not the place to start, as there is no classification fields, so maybe Leads or Opportunities?

If someone could give me a kick start, I'd appreciate it.

thx,

brad

[agupta]

Here are your options:

1. There are 3 modules that keep track of the people/business that you may interact with Contacts, Accounts and Prospects(in campaigns). You can add records here based on the type of relationship. There are different processes associated with each module above.

2. if you want simpler classifications that you may want to use to primarily use contacts module, and add few fields to that modules using our studio tool. The field values will be used to categorize the contact.

3. You may want to search the sugar developers portal( www.sugarforge.org) for projects that might be addressing a similar issue.

Once the classification is done you can use the campaign module to put your "contacts" in lists. The prospect lists feature in this module will allow you to group contacts. Once these lists are created you can even send emails to them using the mass email feature.


Hope this helps,
Ajay

[bbowens]

thanks, ajay. Can you direct me to the studio tool that you mentioned? Also, I notice that you didn't suggest the "Leads" module; could you explain why?

brad

[bbowens]

oops-- I found it in the Admin area....

thanks, ajay. Can you direct me to the studio tool that you mentioned? Also, I notice that you didn't suggest the "Leads" module; could you explain why?

brad