Create or edit a lead

Can I do this task?

When you create a lead A potential customer who must be qualified or disqualified as a sales opportunity. If a lead is qualified, it can be converted to an opportunity, account, and/or contact., there are system-required fields (marked with asterisks Business-required symbol ) and business-recommended fields (marked with plus signs Business-recommended symbol ) to fill out. But other data, such as e-mail addresses, the source of the lead, and specific product interests, can also help your sales staff to follow up.

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Sales, and then click Leads.
2. In the Records group, click New, or open the record that you want to edit.
3. In the General section, enter or edit information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Topic

     Enter what interests the lead, such as the name of a product.

   • First Name

     Enter a first name between 1 and 50 characters. You can use accent marks, in a customer's name or elsewhere, without affecting your ability to sort and find information.

   • Last Name

     Enter a name between 1 and 50 characters.

   • Company Name

     Required. Enter 100 characters or fewer.

   • Enter all contact information that can help a salesperson in making future contacts. E-mail addresses must be valid. For example, someone@example.com.
   • Address
     • ZIP/Postal Code

       Enter 20 characters or fewer.

4. In the Common section, enter all the information you have available in the following sections:
   • Lead Information

     This information helps your organization determine which marketing method, such as advertisement or trade shows, generates the most leads. You can filter on Lead Source to see this information, if it's present.

   • Company Information
     • Industry

       If you do not see the industry you want, ask your system administrator to add it to the list. Reports such as Lead Source Effectiveness use this field; if used with filtering, this can display the lead source effectiveness by industry. The Account form also uses the Industry field. If you add custom industries to the Leads form, add them to the Account form at the same.

   • Annual Revenue

     You must enter numbers between 0.00 and 1,000,000,000.00.

     You can use commas and a decimal point. You cannot use a currency symbol, such as the dollar ($), euro (€), or yen (¥).

     • SIC Code

       Indicate the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code for this account. You can search on SIC for organizations with a particular code to display all accounts of businesses in that category. Enter 20 characters or fewer.

     • No. of Employees

       You must enter a whole number between 0 and 1,000,000.

5. Under Information, click Notes and Activities. In the Notes section, click Add a new note, and add the information that applies to your record.
6. In the Preferences section, enter information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Owner

     By default this is set to be the creator of the record. Click the Lookup button to search for other records.

   • Status Reason

     If you enter this, in the list of leads in the Leads area, you can sort by Status Reason to view new leads or those already contacted.

   • Contact Methods
     • Preferred

       Select how this person wants to be contacted.

     • E-mail

       Selecting Allow allows all e-mail, including e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent. Selecting Do Not Allow will disallow any e-mail to be sent to this address.

     • Bulk E-mail

       Selecting Allow will allow any e-mail as part of a bulk e-mail process, including bulk e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent. Selecting Do Not Allow will disallow any bulk e-mail to be sent to this address.

     • Phone, Mail

       Users can see this information, but Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not use it to control initiating or receiving communications.

     • Fax

       Users can see this information.

   • Marketing Information
     • Source Campaign

       Enter this if this lead was generated as a result of a campaign created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

     • Send Marketing Materials

       If you select Send, marketing material corresponding to campaigns is sent to the respective addresses (e-mail, physical address) for the record. This includes general marketing mailers that might be sent on a regular basis that are not part of a targeted marketing campaign. If you select Do Not Send, marketing materials are not sent, nor can activities related to sending marketing materials be created for the record.

     • Last Date Included in Campaign

       Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically sets the date for this field when any marketing communication is sent to the addresses for the record. You can also manually update this field and enter a date. This field is used as filter criteria in Marketing Automation. For example, the Anti-Spam Setting area of a Campaign form uses the date in this field to make sure that you do not send frequent mailers to a customer.

7. Click Save or Save and Close.

   Resolve potential duplicate records.

   When you publish a duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate., a matchcode A code that is created for every record that a duplicate-detection rule might apply to, used as part of the process of detecting duplicates. is created for every record in the matching record type for that rule. Publishing occurs in the background as a system job.

   1. To open a record to make sure it is a potential duplicate, in the Potential duplicate records list, double-click the record.
      • If the duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. identified potential duplicate records in other record types, review records from each record type listed.
   2. If your new or updated record is not a duplicate, to create the new record, click Save Record.

      - OR -

      If your new or updated record is a duplicate, to cancel your changes, click Cancel.

   Note

   Duplicate detection can take place only if duplicate detection is enabled in Duplicate Detection Settings and if at least one duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. exists for the record type.More information: Avoiding Duplicate Records

   Tip

   To qualify or disqualify a lead, you convert The process of changing or recategorizing a record from one record type to another. For example, converting a campaign response to a lead, and then converting the lead to an account, contact, or opportunity. the lead. First, select or open the lead that you want, and then, in the Actions group, click Qualify. Select options for how you want to qualify the lead, and then click OK. Or, click Disqualify.