Special Edition Using® Microsoft® CRM

Leads

In Chapter 4, “Microsoft CRM Functional and Conceptual Overview,” we introduced the concept of Contact and Account records. In most business, Lead records will be the first step at arriving at a Contact or Account record.

Many marketing and salespeople will be happy with the way Microsoft has chosen to model leads into Microsoft CRM. Specifically, by keeping Leads separate from Contacts and Accounts, Marketing can import and qualify data without cluttering the views sales-people use.

NOTE Consider how having a separate Lead container affects the implementation of your sales process. Most formal sales processes have some sort of a qualification step in the process that can be removed in favor of the Microsoft CRM lead structure. The rule ...