Leads are organizations or individuals that can potentially do business with an organization. Leads can be created manually, but an added feature in CRM is the ability to create a lead from an e-mail. Throughout the life-cycle of a lead, the record can be assigned to a user or team, shared with one or more users or teams and deactivated or reactivated. Many organizations go through a lead qualification process to determine if that lead will in fact result in the purchase of a product or service. Lead records have various statuses based on if the lead is open, qualified, or disqualified. When a lead record is qualified, a new account, contact and/or opportunity is created.
Accounts and contacts are two central components of any CRM system as they enable an organization to manage their customers. They can both be created in multiple ways, such as through the file menu on the ribbon, within a lookup dialog, or for a contact through an associated view. Account and contact records can...