Hi Marybeth!
Marybeth Murphy:I'm trying to play with conversions of leads into customers, and it seems that it can only be done via opportunities.
There are a few ways to convert leads into customers, closing your opportunities is one but you can also convert a lead right from the edit lead page. If you're viewing a lead, scroll to the bottom of the page and there's a Convert to Customer button. This will immediately convert the lead to a customer including any transactions and put that info right into QuickBooks.
Your other method to convert a lead into a customer is through estimates - when creating an estimate you'll notice the Wait for sync approval is checked. As soon as you uncheck this box you'll convert the lead used on the estimate into a customer and all the data will be synced with QuickBooks.
Marybeth Murphy: What I want to know is, what is an opportunity used for? It seems more specific than campaigns and specific to a particular lead/customer.
Opportunities are best used to track potential sales through your pipeline.
Marybeth Murphy: Are opportunities to be used as a series of contact to make one particular sale?
Definitely - your contact points will be activities in this case. As you make contact throughout the opportunity you should utilize the stage field to increase or decrease the probability of the opportunity. This in turn will affect your reports on the home dashboard.
Marybeth Murphy: For example, if I followed up with a Chiropractor after a trip to Dallas, TX, would a good Opportunity name be, "Dallas - August Follow-Up - Dr. Bob"?
It depends, I would probably keep the opportunity name free of wording like follow-up and use an activity to note the trip and follow-up.
Marybeth Murphy: Then I later change the status whether or not they buy from me?
Exactly, their lead status and lead rating should be changed at this point. Was the visit hot, warm or cold. Maybe the visit was cold for your current product offering but he showed interest to be contacted later with a new product. Flip this lead to qualified warm and maybe add an activity for a future date or put some notes into the lead record.
Marybeth Murphy: Do Reps normally make an opportunity for every lead or customer, and make new opportunities after everytime a lead/customer buys?
Everyone will use Method CRM in their own way but we definitely stress the proper use of Opportunities and Activities to get the full benefit of CRM software. It would be best practice to have your reps creating opportunities then issuing invoices or estimates right from the opportunity. The benefit of this process is you link your estimates/invoices to opportunities which in turn let's you see a bird's eye view of a lead becoming a customer and ultimately purchasing. This knowledge will help you refine your sales process.
Great question btw!
~C