We get this query very often - to clarify where exactly to put different info in Zoho CRM. The query usually comes from users migrating from other CRM systems as terminologies differ or users new to using a CRM app. Let me try to explain some of the modules (tabs) - Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Potentials - in simple terms.

Leads : Suppose you have a free product that you offer for download at your website. And during installation you ask for the user's details to be filled in. Or, you have a whitepaper on your website and you ask your readers to fill in details before accessing it. Or, you attend a tradeshow and collect info from people visiting your booth. Such collected user information belongs to Leads. Your sales guys typically call or email these Leads and see if they are interested in buying your services or products.

Contacts : Let's say you followed up on a Lead and have made a sale. Now, you have a happy customer who you will be interacting with on a regular basis. You move her from Leads to Contacts.

Accounts : Accounts is where you put the company information of all your customers. You typically have one or more Contacts associated with an Account.

Potentials : This module helps you track the value of sales potential pipeline. A Potential is associated with a Contact and an Account. Suppose you have Contacts A and B in a customer Account C. And you are discussing sales of goods worth $2,000 with A and $4,500 with B. Your Potential sales pipeline for Account C is worth $6,500 then.

The above is just one simple interpretation of how to use the various modules in Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM allows extensible customization. You can rename the tabs to suit the industry/business you are in. And you can even add custom fields in each module.

As a blogger, I use Zoho CRM extensively. But my use is limited to having everyone in my Contacts list. For a full take on how a typical business is using Zoho CRM, please follow the excellent series of posts being written by Adam Stone of D-Tools. And if you are looking at using Zoho CRM, have a ton of info to be moved from another CRM or from a csv/xls file, please email us and we'll be glad to help you migrate.

For those of you who are already heavy users of Zoho CRM - it would be great if you can share your best practices of how you are using the above modules in Zoho CRM in the comments.

Introduction here: So far I have spent most of my time re-engineering our Zoho CRM system on the Leads side of the process. Before I started I thought we had a pretty good system but I noticed some pretty serious gaps and have worked hard to correct them and refine the process. At this point I am very happy with the Leads aspect of the system and more importantly the sales team is happy as well. In fact the new processes are already generating revenue and positive customer feedback.

So what happens when a lead expresses interest in purchasing something? What is the next step? Take a look at the screen shot below. Notice how the Lead downloaded a trial, all important fields are in the record, the lead has been pre-qualified, the lead status is A Qualified and the note says that the lead is interested in pricing information.

At this point the SA's job is almost finished. They have a perfectly qualified lead with all the proper documentation and history as part of the Lead Record. The only thing left to do is Convert the Lead into an Account, Contact and Potential by hitting the Convert button at the top of the Lead record. This brings up the Convert Lead UI and a number of interesting and very well thought out things happen with just a few clicks of the mouse. The Convert Lead function in Zoho allows the current Lead owner, the SA to:

1. Assign the appropriate SC and send an email to the new Account Owner
2. Create a potential on Conversion. A "Potential" in Zoho is a named opportunity with an amount and close date associated with an Account. For the most part we use Potentials when converting an Account and then rank the Potential on the likelihood of closing. If this box is checked the Potential will NOT be created but the Account and Contact will be created.
3. Name the Potential, the system automatically fills in the Account name and the user would add what the specific Potential name is, in this case 10 seats of Pro.
4. Edit the Potential close date and the Potential Stage, the closer to close the higher the ranking percentage.
5. Identify the decision making role of the Contact.
6. Edit the approximate amount of the Potential

Click Save and watch the magic happen: A new Account is created and the SC is notified. This Account has the name, address, territory info from the Lead. It creates a new Contact under the Account with the Contact and Lead Source info from the Lead. The Potential linked to the Account and the Contact. All of the attachments, activities, tasks and notes are appropriately linked. All this with one click! All the SC has to do is enter the appropriate Account Type = Prospect and Account Rating = Active in this case.

I should mention that this process requires almost zero set up and implementation. In fact it is so smart that it will attempt to warn the user that there is another duplicate Account record and offer to merge the two on conversion. This is a common problem in all CRM systems when there are multiple contacts in the Leads section under the same account. Zoho CRM gets it right out of the box and preserves all of the valuable Lead information on conversion.

Here is a pdf document of all the things that happen when you convert a Lead. It is hard to explain how complex this process is without dredging up all of the details that make it happen. Suffice to say that the logic behind the process is subtle but very well thought out and pretty much works right out of the box. I guess that is the difference between good and great software. The great software hides the complexity but not the power.

Adam Stone is a Zoho CRM customer and CEO/Founder of D-Tools Software.

Introduction here: For the most part I have spent the last five weeks in front of my computer, listening to Sirius Radio (The Vault), eating seeds (Art's Sunflower and Pumpkin) and deconstructing the D-Tools/Zoho CRM system. In tough economic times sometimes the only thing you can do is to fine tune your internal business processes to stay ahead. This has the double advantage of making your company more competitive and efficient and when the economy improves (it always does) you will be in position to immediately capitalize on it. But before you can fine tune your processes you need to make sure you have the right tools for the job.

In our case our BPM tool of choice is Zoho CRM. With some exceptions Zoho CRM is one of those rare software products that is simple enough to immediately provide some value and sophisticated enough to scale thorough complex business process re-engineering. But I digress...

So I spent a fair amount of time analyzing and re-engineering our lead gathering, qualifying and marketing process's. The ultimate goal of this was to somehow classify each lead in the system across many different areas so we could communicate more efficiently with them. The final outcome of all this work is what I like to call the "D-Tools Email Marketing Engine".

Email marketing is perhaps the most cost effective and efficient way to reach your audience. However this is a not a secret technique and is also perhaps the most overused and abused form of marketing today. To be effective in this form of marketing you need to be able target your message right down to the individual. These days the only attention you get is the time it takes to read the subject line. A general message will usually go right into the trash.

With that in mind I created the D-Tools Lead Marketing Engine flowchart. Notice how the process starts general and then gets more specific through industry, category all the way down to the job function of the individual. This way I can easily send a message about wire labels to installers in the Broadcast industry while sending a different message about estimating and proposals to sales people in the Residential AV-Automation industry from a recent trade show.

In Zoho CRM this is as easy as creating a custom list view like one above and selecting the message template. Instantly a targeted, personalized (semi) custom message is sent out to the leads that match the criteria. The beauty of this is that the individual SA or SC can send very personalized and topical messages to their qualified leads while the D-Tools marketing department can send general company messages to the all of the unqualified leads. With this system we can now effectively market to our customer segments without sending out a message that would have no value to the recipient.

With this post I am finally happy with our lead gathering, qualifying and marketing processes. I have fully documented this process here and have communicated to each member of our sales team. Not only do we now have a rock solid process but each person on the team knows exactly what is expected of them and how to do their job.

The nice thing about automation and documentation at this level is that once it is done I can forget about it and move on to other areas. If we need to add a someone to the sales team it is simple enough to point them to these series of posts without revisiting in detail.

The next series of posts will deal with the conversion process from a Qualified Lead to a Prospect with a Potential.

Stay tuned.

Adam Stone is a Zoho CRM customer and CEO/Founder of D-Tools Software.