How should I be using the Opportunity Lead Source vs. Lead/Contact Lead Source in Salesforce.com?

[Anonymous]

We are a Salesforce.com shop (B2B company) and I'm trying to understand how I should be using the Lead Source fields.

In Salesforce.com an Opportunity has a Lead Source field, but so do Contacts (and leads). We associate one or more contacts with an opportunity (using opportunity roles). Each of those contacts has a lead source.

How are other B2B companies using the Opportunity lead source field? The lead source field for the lead/contact makes sense to me - this is where we originally captured their contact information. But, what should opportunity lead source be tracking?

Thanks for your help!

[Anonymous]

We use the opportunity lead source from the contact of which the opportunity was crated from (first point of entry into your database).  This is good to show what source is producing the most opportunity's and $$.  Is it Webstie/3rd party/SEM/SEO, etc.  This can help plan for marketing spend.

[Anonymous]

By default the Opp Lead Source is as Hanne describes: the lead source of the lead/contact from whom the opp was created.

Some companies go a step further and create something called an "Opportunity Source" field that's meant to give credit to "who qualified the lead". That way on each opp, you'll have the "Lead Source", say a trade show, and an Opp Source, which could be "Partner, Inside Sales Team, Inbound Call, etc, etc, etc)".

Just food for thought.