Launchpad Lesson 11 - Lead Setup

In this lesson, we're going to take an exciting step forward. So far, we've covered many of the administrative basics in Salesforce, including apps, objects, user profiles, fields, page layouts, and Lightning page configuration.

Now we're going to put that theory into practice by configuring Salesforce to provide our users with a seamless experience.

The next four lessons are some of my favorites because we're finally going to apply what we've learned and set up Salesforce in a way that your users will understand and find helpful.

These lessons are a bit longer because this is where we do much of the work. However, you'll notice that many of the steps are repeated. By the time you've configured all four sales objects, you'll be well on your way to mastering these skills.

Ready? Let's go.

## Configuring the Lead Object

First, we're going to show you how to set up the Lead object.

Remember, new leads in Salesforce are like business cards. We have the person's name, company, phone number, and email address—and probably not much else. Certainly not much information about their BANT, which is a sales acronym for Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline.

The best practice for lead records is to capture enough information for your salesperson to determine whether the person is a legitimate prospect worth investing more time in.

Don't add too many fields to the Lead object. Lead qualification should be a relatively quick process once you get in touch with someone.

Let's take a look at the Lead record in Salesforce.

The first thing I notice is that the Activity and Details tabs are part of the same component, and Details isn't the default tab. We're definitely going to fix that using the Lightning App Builder.

Under Details, we have the data associated with this lead. For the most part, the standard fields are useful, and there aren't too many of them. Salesforce has done a pretty good job constructing the Lead record.

When a user wants to create a new lead, they'll click the Leads tab and then select New.

A popup window called a modal will appear, prompting the user to enter information.

The red asterisks beside Lead Status, Lead Name, and Company indicate that these fields are required to save the record. You can make additional fields required, but we'd recommend proceeding cautiously—especially with the Lead object.

The goal of any page should be to capture all the pertinent information your business needs, remembering that simpler is always better.

If you have no intention of tracking or reporting on a particular piece of information, you should remove that field from the page.

I can't begin to tell you how many companies I've trained where the company or its implementation consultants placed far too many fields on the page.

Remember, we're designing Salesforce so that salespeople find it easy to use and actually want to use it. Their jobs are hard enough already, and now we're asking them to learn a new CRM. Let's give our sales teams some help here.

Spoken like an old sales guy, I know.

I'm not saying you shouldn't add new fields. You will want to capture key information from prospects and customers that's unique to your business.

For the rest of this lesson, we'll focus on making changes to the Lead record that support the lead process at our fictional company, Rocket Shop.

At Rocket Shop, we sell rocket ships, rocket ship parts, and rocket fuel. We've learned that a great prospect for us is identified by three things:

* The number of rockets in their fleet

* Their projected budget

* What they generally spend their money on

Based on this information, we're going to add three custom fields:

* Rockets launched annually

* Annual rocket ship budget

* Primary product interest: rocket ships, rocket parts, or rocket fuel

Let's return to Salesforce and look at some other Lead fields that we'll want to adjust.

Because we're interested in the number of rockets in a prospect's fleet, this information can replace the standard and somewhat arbitrary Lead Rating field, which categorizes leads as Hot, Warm, or Cold.

We're going to remove the Rating field.

One of our key lead-generation activities is soliciting referrals from our existing customers, so we want to capture that information in the Lead Source field.

When we look at the picklist for this standard field, we can see an option for Employee Referral, but not Customer Referral. We'll add Customer Referral to the list.

The last thing we're going to do is change the Lead Status values. The existing values aren't necessarily bad, but they don't accurately reflect how our lead process works at Rocket Shop.

To summarize, we're going to:

* Remove one standard field.

* Add three custom fields.

* Update two existing picklists.

* Modify both the page layout and the Lightning record page.

Before you get started, we encourage you to download the Launchpad training sheet included with this lesson. Just click the link.

This will help you and your team determine which standard Salesforce fields you want to keep and which custom fields you want to add.

We strongly encourage you to meet with your sales team and identify the key information you want to capture when speaking with a new lead.

The more you involve your sales team in this process, the more they'll ultimately buy into using Salesforce.

All right, let's get to work.

## Creating Custom Fields

First, let's create our three custom fields.

Here's a helpful shortcut: From the Setup cog, provided you're on the Leads tab, select Edit Object to go directly to the Lead object settings.

Now, select Fields and Relationships and click New.

### Rockets Launched Annually

The first field will capture the number of rockets launched per year, so we'll create a Number field.

Select Number and click Next.

For the field label, enter Rockets Launched Annually, and change the length to four. This allows us to capture fleet sizes of up to just under 10,000 rockets.

Add some helpful text for users.

Leave the three checkboxes blank and click Next.

The first option would make this field required. Although we'd like our sales representatives to capture this information, the prospect may not provide it—especially during the first call.

We can make the field visible to all users by leaving the settings unchanged. Likewise, we'll ensure that the field remains editable by leaving the read-only boxes unchecked.

Click Next.

Leave the checkbox selected so that the field is added to the standard Lead layout. Then click Save & New to create the next field.

### Annual Rocket Ship Budget

The Annual Rocket Ship Budget field will be a Currency field.

Follow the same steps to create and configure it.

### Primary Product Interest

Our final field, Primary Product Interest, will be a Picklist.

We could choose either a standard picklist or a multi-select picklist. Multi-select picklists allow users to choose more than one option, while a standard picklist allows them to choose only one.

Although a prospect might be interested in two or more of our solutions, our goal is for the sales representative to identify the prospect's primary product interest.

Again, the right choice depends on how your business operates.

Choose a field label, then select the option to enter the picklist values. Enter the values one per line.

You can choose to display the values alphabetically or leave them in the order you entered them.

If one product is selected more than 75% of the time, you might consider making it the default. Otherwise, the default will be blank, and the user will need to select an option each time.

Leave the remaining settings unchanged, click Next, and then click Save.

## Adjusting Standard Fields

Next, let's adjust the two standard fields: Lead Source and Lead Status.

From Fields and Relationships, find and select Lead Source.

Scroll down to the Lead Source Picklist Values section and click New.

Enter Customer Referral and click Save.

To keep the list in alphabetical order, select Reorder and use the arrows to place Customer Referral after Customer Event.

Then click Save.

You can also select the alphabetical-order option, if appropriate.

Be sure to add or remove lead sources based on what's relevant to your business.

Now, return to Fields and Relationships and select Lead Status.

Scroll down to the Lead Status picklist values. The existing values are acceptable, but we prefer the following configuration.

Deactivate—but don't delete—Unqualified. You may change your mind in the future and want to restore it.

Keep New, and deactivate Working. Don't worry; we're going to replace it with more useful statuses.

Leave Nurturing and Qualified active.

Notice that Qualified is marked as Converted. Every lead-status configuration must include a status that allows the lead to be converted.

Now, add the following statuses:

* Working – Contact Attempted

* Working – Contact Made

These statuses are extremely useful.

Working – Contact Attempted indicates that the sales representative has acknowledged the lead and is trying to make contact but hasn't been successful yet. This is different from New, which implies that no one has worked on the lead.

Working – Contact Made tells you that the sales representative has successfully made contact with the prospect.

Trust me, your sales managers will love this.

Finally, add Disqualified.

Reorder the statuses as shown in the demonstration and click Save.

## Modifying the Lead Page Layout

Now that we've created our custom fields and adjusted some of the standard field picklists, let's modify the page layout.

From the Lead Object Manager, select Page Layouts, and then select Lead Layout.

First, let's remove the Rating field by selecting the remove icon.

Next, we'll add our three custom fields. Because these fields are unique and we want to draw special attention to them, we'll create a new section beneath Lead Information and above Address.

Name the section Rocket Ship Fleet Information.

Leave the layout and tab-key-order settings unchanged, and click OK.

Now, drag your three custom fields into this new section.

That's it. Click Save.

## Reviewing the Changes

Let's see the results of our work.

From the App Launcher, return to the Sales app.

Select the Leads tab and click New to view the new fields on the modal, complete with the help text we added.

## Modifying the Lightning Page

Finally, we're going to rearrange the Lead Lightning page.

Remember how to access the Lightning App Builder? If you're on a lead record, click Edit Page from the Setup cog.

If you don't have a lead record, here's another way to access it.

Go to Setup and search for Lightning App Builder.

Find the Lead Record Page that doesn't have a “1” in its name and click Edit.

I'm going to build this page from the perspective of not having any leads in Salesforce, even though I do have leads for training purposes. This is simply to demonstrate what you might see in your own org.

The process is the same, even if the screen looks slightly different.

If you do have a lead record in Salesforce, simply click OK on the modal.

Now, we're going to modify the layout so that the Details and Related tabs appear in the large component, while Activity and Chatter appear in the smaller right-hand component.

We believe this is the preferred layout for Lead and Opportunity objects, where it's generally more important to have sales activities prominently displayed.

From the large component, make Details the default tab.

Delete the Activity and Chatter tabs.

Add a Related tab and place it after Details.

Next, click the Related tab and add the Related List Quick Links and Related Lists components. Stack them as shown in the demonstration.

Leave the Potential Duplicates component at the top right. That's always a good place for it.

From the component list, add the Tabs component and place it directly below the Potential Duplicates component.

Click on the tabs and change them to Activity and Chatter, respectively. Make sure Activity is the default tab.

Next, click the Activity tab. Return to the component list and drag the Activities component into the Add Components Here box.

Then do the same thing with the Chatter tab.

Almost there.

Click Save, then click Activation.

Select Assign as Org Default, leave the next step set to Desktop, click Next, and then click Save.

Exit the Page Builder using the Back button in the top-left corner.

The last thing we want to do is see what our changes look like.

Exit the Setup menu and return to the Sales app. Click Leads, find a lead if you have one, and review the changes.

Everything should now be where we want it:

* Details is the default tab, with Related beside it.

* Activity is the default tab in the other component, with Chatter beside it.

All right, we're done with the Lead setup.

Of course, you'll make different modifications based on how your business operates, but you should now have all the tools necessary to make these initial changes to the Lead object.

Now, get your sales team together and discuss what you want to accomplish.

Have fun, and good luck. When you come back, we'll do the same thing with Accounts.

We'll talk soon.