Process Incoming Leads

Any incoming lead can be considered a sales opportunity. You can create opportunities and associate them to a salesperson so that you can keep track of potential sales.

Before you can start using opportunity management, you must set up sales cycles and sales cycle stages. A sales cycle is made up of a series of stages that go from the initial contact to the closing of a sale. You can setup as many sales cycles as you need, and you can set up as many sales cycle stages as necessary within a sales cycle.

As you create opportunities, you should provide information about the contact, salesperson, sales cycle, and dates, as well as your estimates for the sales value of the opportunity and your estimation of the chances of its success.

The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed.

To	See
Set up the sales cycles that you usually follow.	How to: Set Up Opportunity Sales Cycles
Set up the different stages within each opportunity sales cycle.	How to: Set Up Sales Cycle Stages
Create sales opportunities that you have from your contacts.	How to: Create Opportunities