Handling leads in multiple product lines environment

Hello,

we have a problem in calculating the leads conversion report. Our company have 4 product lines where it is possible for a lead to be interested in more than one product and different sales managers are talking with the same person.

Our problem is that if Sales A talks with Lead A for product A and convert the lead to an account means that he have 1 lead , 1 opportunity and 100% conversion rate.

One month after Sales B talks with Lead A about product B so he needs to convert the lead to an opportunity but this cannot happen anymore.

We can of course use opportunity directly for product B but this would not really be right because Sales A and sales B started the discussion in the same time so somehow it would be unfair to say that only sales A have managed to convert the lead.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks

Cosmin

  • A couple of options come to mind:

    1) Give credit for Won opportunities instead of lead conversion. This one is obvious so I assume it does not meet your business model.

    2) Allow for multiple Lead conversions, this would allow both A and B to go through the lead conversion process but it does mean that on the Lead record Opportunity B will overwrite Opportunity A. It could also cause issues if the salesperson is not careful enough to realize that the lead was already converted and use the duplicate check to get the right contact/account. The overwrite of the Opportunity related to the Lead could, in theory, be resolved by adding a relationship between Lead and Opportunities and changing the Convert Lead process to record all Opportunities created via Lead Conversion... it can get messy...

    3) Allow duplicate Leads. If A has started a conversation with the Lead for Product A then A is assigned the Lead. When B starts the conversation, allow B to copy the Lead and assign it to themselves, they can then start a conversation for Product B on this "new" Lead. Whoever converts the lead first will create the Contact and Account. Whoever comes second will reuse the Contact/Account created by the first and convert their Lead with their own Opportunity. You could, in the copy process, relate the two leads as well so that you know that they are essentially the same Lead. You should now have two Opportunities linked to one Contact/Account and two Leads.

    Without knowing too much about your business I'm thinking that #1 is not an option, #2 is too complicated and can lead to issues, #3 is probably your cleanest option.

    Hope this helps,
    FrancescaS

  • Hi,

    We have the same situation.  We make the 2nd Opportunity manually and go to the Leads sub-panel and link back to the original lead.  Thus we have 1 lead, 1 account, 1 contact and 2 opportunities.

    Good luck!

    Bob