Also I wanted to ask about adding products into Salesforce - specifically with a drop-down menu, perhaps. Naturally, we can enter all information in "comments" section. But unless it's already there and I don't see it, it seems like the database would be more helpful to us if we could add a function to click on the products that each lead/account takes, i.e. plastic pails, metal pails, liners, caps, etc. We can decide how specific we want to make it and how we'd want to set it up to be most effective to us.
But the bottom in is that we are, and going forward will be, entering all these prospects and customers and their information... and if there were an easy way to have Salesforce run a report to list for us (based on what we've entered) all the prospects on a certain product, then that information would be very useful. For example, we could also set it up to add products that we're thinking of carrying but don't yet have (bottles, whatever)... so that we capture that data as we get it, and then can quickly access it later when it's relevant.
The existing address fields in Salesforce let you run the reports you are looking for (the Address field in the UI is made up of several individual fields you can use for reporting.
Salesforce has Products which are usually used for what you describe. Look at the Products tab. Opportunities are created for an Account/Contact, Products are added to the Opportunity, and revenue pipelines/forecasts are based on the Opportunities with Products.
