I am having a difficult time convincing my executives the importance of using the Lead object. Does anyone have any successful business cases showing that a sale truly does start with a lead? I have given anecdotes of prior experience, possible scenarios, etc to no avail.
Many thanks!
The way I explain it is kinda like this:
An Account is a company that you're either already doing business with or has already been vetted and is a viable Prospect, or you have a relationship with them (Partner, Vendor, Competitor, etc).
Contacts are any people who you know at any of those Accounts/Companies.
Leads: are the unknown quantity. They're the people who visit your company website, you bump into on an elevator, or at a conference, and maybe they hand you a business card, or their name and email or phone scrawled on a napkin.
You don't want to just dump them in as Accounts and Contacts because half of them are crap. So instead you enter them as Leads, you do some research, make a few calls, emails, and see if they're legit, or to paraphrase Gertrude Stein see if "There's a THERE there"
