When a lead has shown genuine interest in your product, you qualify the lead by converting it to a contact with an account and a deal. In Freshsales, the data of the leads who convert is copied to their corresponding fields under the associated contact, account, and deal. This saves you the trouble of having to gather all the information from scratch.

• An associated Contact is created by default for every lead.
• An account can be created if the Account name field is populated. (not mandatory)
• A deal can be created if the 'Deal Information' section's Deal name & Deal value is populated. (not mandatory)
• The Status field takes the value as Qualified lead automatically. 

To convert leads, 

1. Go to the details page of the lead you’d like to convert.
2. Click thebutton.
3. This brings up the CONVERT overlay. You can opt to merge the lead with a new contact or with an existing contact.
   
   
   
4. Opt for Create new Contact and click.
   
   
5. In the Convert Lead overlay, you’d find the Last Name pre-filled. If available, First name, email, the company name is pre-filled too. If the fields are empty, enter the appropriate data. Keep in mind that the Last Name is mandatory for creating an associated account for the lead. In this overlay, you will see all the required fields of contact, account, and deal so that records with mandatory information are created.
   
   Note: For all accounts created on or before 27th June 2017, the Company Name is mandatory for conversion. For the new Garden and Estate accounts created after 27th June 2017, Company name is optional. A new Blossom or Sprout account user can contact our support team to make the Company Name optional.
   

1. If you’d like to create or associate a deal to the contact, select the Associate this contact with a deal checkbox.
   1. To associate an existing deal to the contact, enter the deal's name in Deal Name and choose a deal from the results that appear.
   2. To create a new deal, 
      1. Enter the Deal name.
      2. Enter the Deal value (in dollars).
      3. Provide the Expected close date for the deal using the date picker.
      4. Choose the Deal stage from the drop down. You can add custom stages in addition to the stages listed in the drop down.
2. Click when you’re done.

To know what happens during lead conversion, read on.

1. Contact creation:

The email address of the lead is searched for matches with the existing contacts in Freshsales.

• If a match is found, then the lead’s data is transferred to the existing contact’s record. A new contact is not created. 
• If a match is not found, the search continues with the lead’s Last name and Company name. If a contact matches the criteria, then the lead’s data is transferred to that contact. 
• If no matches are found for the lead’s email address, last name, and company name, then a new contact is created. 
• The Status of the newly created Contact is automatically updated to Qualified Lead.

2. Account creation: If the 'account name' field is filled during conversion, an account associated with the lead is created.

• If the company is an existing account in Freshsales, the newly converted contact is associated with that account. 
• If an account doesn’t exist then a new account is created for the same.

3. Deal creation:

When you select the checkbox, you can either associate the contact with one of the deals that belong to its Account or create a brand new deal and then associate the contact to it. 

• The contact becomes the Related Contact of the deal it is associated with. 
• While trying to add more related contacts to the deal, the search result lists out contacts according to with prioritized intelligence.
• If a new deal is created, the deal can be found in the Deals tab.
  
  and also under Deals in the details page of the Contact, 
  as well as its Account.
  

4. All the default lead fields (under Basic Information) are automatically mapped to the default fields of the newly converted contact, account, and deals.

5. If the lead is matched with an existing contact, then only the default fields of the contact, account, and deal (if created) which are blank, is filled with the data from the corresponding lead fields. 

6. To copy the lead’s data from custom fields, you must map them to the equivalent custom fields of the contact, account or deal.

7.  Add the deal to a suitable pipeline using the Deal Pipeline drop-down in the Lead Convert overlay.