Dealing with Converted Statuses

[Anonymous]

In Salesforce, it forces you to have a converted status when a rep converts their lead to a contact.

This wreaks havoc on my lead lifecycle, as what commonly happens is a lead (let's say from Walmart) comes in, and the rep has already created an account and an opportunity for Walmart.

Then, even though this lead may not be Marketing Qualified or Sales Qualified, is converted, Salesforce asks for a converted status.

What are you guys using in this case? I want to make sure my reps use the proper converted status, but I don't want my lead lifecyle getting skewed everytime someone who comes in after an account and opp have already been created for that company.

Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thanks.

[Josh_Hill13]

So you don't want these new leads attached to the Account?

How is your lifecycle setup?

[Anonymous]

It sounds like your lifecycle is a linear process where leads must move through every stage.  A known lead is moved immediately to converted, causing your lifecycle to function unexpectedly.  

We generally design the lifecycle so every stage can pull leads from any previous stage, similar to the design of the Progression statuses.

[Anonymous]

So, to answer your questions:

Josh: We do want new leads to be attached to accounts, but I don't want that process to cause people to jump from one status to another. (i.e. someone is in engaged, and then the rep adds them to the account and their status jumps to Sales Accepted). Our lifecycle goes as follows:



Steven: My lifecycle is setup to accomodate this, but the main problem is that on the conversion page there are limited choices to choose from. In the cases I'm referring to, I would prefer for their converted status to be the same as it currently is. For example, someone fills out one form and is in the engaged status. The rep sees this person and then converts them to an existing account, they have the choice of either Sales Accepted or Contacted. See below:


Last time I checked I couldn't have Engaged on this drop down because it was a default status. How do you guys handle this?