Understanding leads, contacts, and deals in Sell

Leads, contacts, and deals are the three most important objects you will use in Sell. Moving from lead to contact to deal in Sell follows the progression and qualification of a prospect from the initial conversation through to becoming a customer (see Sell terminology).

You can access your leads, contacts, and deals from the top toolbar in Sell.

This article contains the following topics:

• What is a lead?
• What is a contact?
• What is a deal?

What is a lead?

Click the Leads icon () to view all your leads.

A lead is a person or company that hasn't previously worked with your organization. You use the lead page to store relevant information about people or companies you are approaching to understand if there is business potential. In a typical sales process, a lead is created in Sell after it has been qualified by Marketing (MQL), but before it has been qualified by Sales (SQL).

A lead can be created in Sell a number of ways, for example, automatically from a web form or integration, importing in bulk, or you can manually create a lead (see adding leads from different sources).

After your team has qualified a lead, it can be converted to a contact (and deal). Lead conversion in Sell is a one-way process. When a lead is converted to a contact, there should be no need to revert the action. Converting a lead to a contact is be the primary method for keeping unqualified sales prospects out of your sales pipeline.

What is a contact?

Click the Contacts icon () to view all your contacts.

A contact in Sell is a person or company that you have qualified or have done business with in the past. A lead is usually qualified to a contact when they have demonstrated in some way that they are a good fit to do business with you, and have a potential interest in becoming a customer.

What is a deal?

Click the Deals icon () to view all your deals.

A deal is a sales opportunity that you've identified and are managing through your sales pipeline. The sales pipeline represents the key milestones in your Sales process that each opportunity typically passes through. It helps your Sales team to stay organized by understanding what stage each deal is at, and for management to manage the progress of your Sales and Sales team.

As a deal progresses through the pipeline, it starts in the first stage and moves from left to right, through all the defined stages until it reaches one of three closed stages: Won, Lost, or Unqualified.

Note: You can add, rename, and remove Sell deal stages to match your business and sales process (see Customizing your deal pipeline stages).