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in this video i am going to be answering a very common question what is the difference between leads and opportunities inside of salesforce are we going over what leads are what opportunities are and then how to convert leads into opportunities maybe that is a bit of a hint for this video welcome crm crew my name is nick just before we get into the video if you need any further help with salesforce training please check out our website below we provide bespoke crm training for businesses around the world so without further ado let's get straight into the video so once you log into salesforce of course you'll come to the home screen now in this video like i said we are going to be or i'm going to be explaining the difference between the leads area inside of your salesforce system and the opportunities area so what we first you want to do is head over to our leads and as you can see here i've got all of my open leads inside of the system now it is very common and it happens with a lot of people in lots of different crm systems because essentially leads and opportunities are the same structure in every crm system people get confused between the two they think that either the leads area is the sales area which it absolutely isn't and then the other thing is they just don't use the leads area at all which is really not what you want to be doing you want to be using both the leads and the opportunities so firstly let me explain what leads are inside of your system so the best way that i describe it my favorite way to describe it is that it's a bit of a dumping ground right and i know that sounds really really odd but it's actually a very very useful tool inside of the system that allows us to track data that we don't necessarily know is going to be of value yet so leads is essentially isolated it has no connection to contacts no connection to accounts no connection to opportunities so when you create a lead and i will show that in a moment all you are doing is just tracking the key information and you're adding it to your dumping ground right and then from the dumping ground you can go ahead and move it out when it becomes a value so let me firstly give you an example of when you would look to use leads let's say you met someone at trade show and you had a conversation with them it was very brief conversation but they may be asked a couple of questions about your products what you do they showed a very small amount of interest it's definitely not the point where you want to track it as a sale or an opportunity but it's worth having their information in the system you think okay maybe i could do a follow-up email with them or maybe have a couple of calls with them that's when you go ahead and you create a lead right so you create a lead based on the fact that they may have shown some small interest and you think maybe you could turn them into business you're not too sure yet so you dump them in the dumping ground in the leads area and you can manage them there you can log obviously log tasks emails phone calls all for your leads and then let's say over time over a few conversations he's showing or this person is showing more interest in or a lot more interest in what you have to offer then you can go ahead and convert them from a lead to an account an opportunity and a contact but obviously your accounts and contacts these are what you've built relationships these are business relationships you've got so you're obviously your contacts the individuals and then the accounts of the businesses and these are relationships that you have with these people you do not want to just go ahead and throw in random people or random pieces of information into your contacts and accounts because it is then going to make managing your actual relationships far more difficult because you can't differentiate between who is a value and who's not so that's why we use leads so if i go ahead and press the new button which is just here you will see that we do not need to assign or connect anything inside of our leads area so you can see here we've got lead status and then all we need to do and the information is very very limited or very little is required we just enter their last name and the company at a bare minimum i would always also recommend adding their email address as well just as a point of reference reference i think that's really important it's never ever difficult to get an email address so i'd always just have that just in case and it also allows opens up another opportunity for communication but as you can see the information is very very limited we do not need much to create a lead and this is obviously intentional because at the very start after you have that conversation with the person at the trade show you'll have bare bones information you're not going to have much on them so you create a lead and obviously over time as you network with them and qualify them and then you can go ahead and collect more and more information so go ahead and press the save button i've now added our lead into our salesforce system and as you can see here we've got our sales stages and this is why people get confused it's because they think these sales stages are the stages for a sale but they're actually not this is just qualifying our lead from one stage to the next so we've qualified it set a new stage and then we can make and then we can you know obviously these are going to be suited to your business processes but we have new to working to nurturing and then finally we convert so when we deem a lead of enough value to create an account a contact and an opportunity and i know i make it sound like contacts and opportunities of these cherished things but i do actually think you have to think like that you have to think that these contacts and accounts i have they are really really important to my business and the relationship i have so you kind of want to look after them as much as you can and by looking after them it means preventing any bad data from going there so make sure you're not polluting the system with anything that wouldn't be of value to you and other people using the system but obviously you work through the different stages you can mark as current status you can obviously log calls and things like that down the bottom here and then finally we get to the converted stage they've shown enough interest for you to consider the fact that they are worth creating the opportunity the account and the contact the cherished account and contacts and then you go ahead and press the select converted status this is where you can then very very easily and it does it all all of the information that you provided when you created the lead and obviously you update that information as time goes on the communication increases then it just automatically creates an account and a contact and an opportunity and then you can go ahead and press the convert button and it goes ahead and you may have to add some additional information so let's say i'll just add nick and that's all the information i'm going to add so as you can see here that lead has now been converted into an account contact and an opportunity so i can click out that if i just head back to the leads area you can see here one other thing i do want to show you in the leads area is the kanban view so if you go to this view here and you can just use a kanban view you can drag and drop to the different stages as well so it this is why i totally understand people getting confused and thinking in sales it's not sales it's just a means of working leads into hopefully becoming sales another good example before we move on from the leads area is let's say you're collecting cold emails and you're doing cold email marketing you're obviously gonna wanna have their information so you want their first name last name their company and their email address obviously as a minimum you'd probably put them in the leads area you do your email and then however many follow-ups your three follow-ups if they then do not respond they're probably an unqualified lead you remove you just mark them as unqualified or if they do respond show some interest then you can convert them into an option into an opportunity account and a contact so once we are happy with leads hopefully you're now familiar with the dumping ground and why it's such a useful tool essentially a filter for your system we then head over to our opportunities and as you can see there are a couple of example opportunities here but this is the one we've just gone ahead and created so this is the crm crew now the opportunities area is your sales area inside of your salesforce system this is where you manage your sales this is where you manage each stage of your sale from the the the initial free consultation to the to obviously the proposal the negotiation and then obviously closing it as either one or lost now opportunities they are directly connected to contacts and accounts you can have multiple contacts for one opportunity you can only have one account for opportunities as many to many to many or many to one relate i'm not going to relationship setups in this video but opportunities this is the sales area okay we can click on any opportunity so this is the one we've just created and as you can see here we've got our sales stages these can obviously be customized to suit your business this is the sales and the main piece of the sales inside of the salesforce system and any crm system for that matter so you move each stage through and i'm sure you're all very familiar with this very very simple to do and this just helps you manage all of your sales very very easily and then hopefully you get to the stage where you can close your opportunity as one or unfortunately lost as the case may be but you get to the closed area select close stage and then you can mark it as either one or lost okay now a couple of instances where you wouldn't actually use leads right so obviously you've let's say you've completed a sale for crm crew they've bought something from you you've already got now a relationship with that particular business and obviously the contacts inside of that business you do not need to create a lead for opportunity if you've already had a sale i don't think anyway now it's up to you but if you've sold to someone once i think the chances are you're gonna be able to sell them again and it actually comes down to a matter of winning and losing a negotiation so i don't think you'd need to create leads for that um and obviously opportunities is the real sales area so it's better i think leads is the way you build that initial relationship once you've got an established relationship you have the contacts and accounts and obviously you you can't connect the contacts and accounts to lead so you just you wouldn't track it you've got a relationship this is where you manage opportunities so let's say we sold crm crew six months later they're after another product i wouldn't create a lead i'll just create a product i'll just create an opportunity immediately okay so hopefully you're now familiar with what opportunities are i will also show you the kanban view for your opportunities it's exactly the same it's just managing the different sales stages and then if we manage to get to close one we can go ahead and select that as close one and this particular sale will be marked as closed one or you can drag and drop it into the top right hand corner and close it as lost and then you can update ingly and that will remove it from the pipeline so opportunities is your sales and then obviously the leads is the very very beginning of a relationship it is the dumping ground of your system to make sure you keep good quality data and you also at the same time are able to track relevant information that you need hopefully this video has been of value and i will see you in a moment's time you should now have a clear understanding of the difference between leads and opportunities inside of your sales force and you can go ahead and start using both of them effectively and efficiently if you have enjoyed the video or found it at all useful please consider giving it a like possibly even subscribing if you have any further questions at all you are more than welcome to drop a comment below or you can email me as my details in the description below and i will do my best to answer any questions you do have thank you ever so much for watching and i will hopefully see you shortly in the next video thank you and goodbye