by Mary Gospe and Sue Hay, Principal Consultant, BeWhys Marketing
Salesforce.com (SFDC) is a SaaS-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that helps companies efficiently track and manage their sales process. Like most CRMs, SFDC comes standard with a Leads object (Object is SFDC “speak” for module), which is completely separate from Accounts and Contacts.
The Leads object can be viewed as a “qualification pool” or “holding pen” for suspects coming in from your website or from other marketing initiatives, e.g. Contact Us forms, downloads, webinars, tradeshows, PPC campaigns, email blasts, etc. or those that have been created by your sales team. An individual Lead record contains information about the person and the company they work for.
There are many advantages of using the Leads Object:
- Web to Lead: SFDC provides code so you can automatically create Lead records from people who have filled out a form on your website.
- Auto assignment rules: Leads can be routed to the appropriate sales rep based on location or other criteria.
- It can be highly customized in terms of fields so your sales reps are guided to ask the right qualifying questions and capture the answers.
Although most SFDC customers use the Leads object, not all use it the same way. Here are examples of how two companies chose to leverage the Leads object based on their sales model.
Company A: Account-based Marketing Model
This B2B company sells into financial services companies in the US. They know the universe of companies they want to sell to and want to measure their market penetration. They chose to create Accounts and Contacts in SFDC for every financial services company and tag them as “prospect” or “client”.
The SFDC Leads object is used only as a holding pen. Sales reps follow-up on the Leads and convert those that met their target market criteria to Accounts and Contacts with or without an Opportunity.
Advantages:
- The Accounts object contains the entire universe of companies they want to sell to, making reporting on goaled market penetration easier, as well as helping the company assign the optimal number of sales reps to specific Account territories.
- Working a deal from an Account record allows you to see all the people (Contacts) you have associated with that particular company or Account and see the entire activity history of conversations and Opportunities.
Company B: Accounts contain only Customers and Prospects with Opportunities
This B2B company sells to a broad range of industries that is ever expanding and changing. Their Account section contains Accounts that are customers or prospects with an active or closed sales Opportunity. Other Account records are for partners and analysts/vendors.
Advantages:
- The Accounts and Contacts section is focused and clean.
- The Leads object is the primary lead management pool, allowing the company to see the top portion of the sales funnel until the lead is qualified and converted into an Account and Contact, with an Opportunity.
- You can see where suspects are coming from – which campaigns are working better than others, which campaigns are influencing the sales cycle, and where you are getting the best bang for the marketing dollar in order to make educated decisions regarding budget.
- It provides visibility into the qualification process.
Conclusion:
Whether you choose to limit Accounts and Contacts to clients and prospects with Opportunities, or build out Accounts for the entire universe of companies you want to sell to, depends on your unique business and sales process. We’d love to hear your view on how you are leveraging the Leads object based on your market strategy.