Why is a Contact’s status important?

The status of a Contact lets a sales agent organize Contacts based on their stage in the  sales cycle: 

  • Qualified lead

  • Prospect

  • Customer

  • Lost customer

  • Partner

  • Reseller

to name a few.


This will play a key role in deciding the type of conversation that best suits while approaching each of them.

Ex: The kind of emails that you send a customer certainly differs from ones sent to a reseller. 


With this field,

  • you can now easily filter out specific types of Contacts. 

  • use more relevant and targeted business strategies while approaching each of them. 


The default types of status in Freshsales can be modified to suit your business structure. 



What are the default Contact statuses in Freshsales?


  • Qualified Lead: A lead who has shown genuine interest in your product, replied to emails, answered calls and actively interacting with you. 

           Such a Lead, when converted to a contact, becomes a Qualified Lead.

           Note: In Freshsales, any Contact created from lead conversion would have it’s 

                     Status field automatically updated as Qualified Lead. 

                     This happens only if this choice is not modified or deleted from the 

                     Status field options.


  • Prospect: Is a potential customer who meets certain criteria like your target market, has the means to buy and has authority to make buying decisions. Seeing if a contact is a prospect or not, is the first step in the selling process and so is important.


  • Customer: A person or business who buys and uses your product as a result of a won deal. You are benefitted as a result of a successful sale. 


  • Lost: Those customers who’ve purchased your product or service, but have discontinued using it after some time.  


  • Partner: A company or person who has a share in the business dealings, profit or loss of your company. 


  • Reseller: They are customers who don’t use your products. But, they buy it from you and sell them for a profit(or loss) to the outside market.


How to modify these default Status choices?

Based on the type of business you are in, you might have a slightly different set of Contacts you deal with. 

To learn how to add a few more, delete irrelevant ones or modify existing choices, refer this.


Note:

Status field can be found in, 

  • Contacts module: It’s a default Contact field and can be customized.

  • Reports: Used as an x-axis, y-axis or a grouping field value.

  • CSV import: Can map the Status field to a column in the csv.

  • Filters and views in the entities list view.

  • Workflow automation.