Applicable plans
Sprout Blossom Garden Estate Forest

As a salesperson, and new to Freshsales... you might be confused as to who should be a lead and who should be a contact. Also, you might want to know how accounts and deals are linked to each of these.  


So, before using the product, it’s important to know,

Note: Lead and a contact cannot be used interchangeably.


Who is a lead?
Any prospect who shows interest in your product.
Ex: Say you meet a person called James at a conference. You exchanged your business cards with each other and had a quick talk about your product too. So, James is interested in your product. This makes him a lead.
Even those who sign up through your website are also leads.

Who is a contact?
Anyone who actively responds to your calls, emails or tries out the product qualify as a contact.


Note:
In most cases, once a lead responds to your follow up activities, you convert them to a contact. But, it can differ based on your sales process.


The first and most important step when you start using Freshsales is to add leads and contacts:


You can add leads either,

  • Manually via import, using the Quick Add button, from appointments and call logs.
  • Automatically from your website (via Freshsales for Web) and from sales emails (via email forwarding).

When does a lead become a contact? - ‘Qualifying your leads’


Your leads are like raw data.
They need to be filtered, tested and observed for a while to know how probable they are to buy your product.
While contacts are a subset of leads.
They are a qualified group of leads who are most probable to buy your product.
So before deciding if a lead can become a contact, they need to be qualified!

How can a lead be qualified?

Leads can be qualified based on:

  • Lead Score: Some activities like configuring territory, adding new users regularly, etc of lead show that the person is highly interested compared to a lead who is less active. Based on these activities a lead will have a score.
    The higher the lead score, the more engaged is the lead and ready to purchase your product or service.
  • Social profile enrichment: Research on the job title, company profile, number of employees using a lead’s social profile like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc would help you know how likely it is for the lead to purchase the product.
    A lead at a higher hierarchy is more probable to purchase the product than someone with a lower profile.

  • Email responses: How well a lead responds to your emails and if he has enabled email tracking in the product and couple of other gestures show that he is closely observing and exploring the product. The probability of such a lead purchasing the product is pretty positive.

    If leads are positive in the above three aspects, they are qualified to be converted into contacts.


1. Contact: The lead's personal details such as Name, Mobile number, Address etc. is transferred to the Contact fields of the newly created contact.

2. Account: All company-related information gets listed under the Accounts field. If the company name is already registered with Freshsales, the account info simply gets updated.


3. Deal: You might have filled in details such as deal name, deal value, deal expected close date, etc of an interested lead. When you convert a lead, a Deal is created and all the related data is transferred to the newly created deal.


How do leads, contacts, accounts, and deals work in Freshsales?



Note:
A lead cannot be directly connected to an Account or Deal. Only a contact will have an associated Account or Deal.