Lead, opportunity and deal: where each record starts and ends

A lead record is created by an event. Someone submits the enquiry form, scans a badge at an exhibition or sends a WhatsApp message, and the record holds a name, a contact route and the source.

It holds no value. You cannot yet say whether this person can buy, whether the plant manager or the purchasing manager signs the order, or whether the enquiry was meant for a rival. A figure on a lead skews forecasts.

A lead ends in one of two ways. Someone qualifies it, or someone closes it as junk, a duplicate or not now, with a reason code that survives in the history.

Qualification is a short call. Is there a real need? Does this person decide or only influence? Is there a budget and a date? When enough answers are yes, the lead converts, and the rep records those answers on the new opportunity so nobody asks the buyer twice.

Conversion creates an opportunity, an account and a contact, and the lead stays behind as history for any later audit of where buyers come from. Nothing is retyped. Phone number, source and call notes carry across.

The opportunity now carries what the lead lacked. It has an expected value, a close date, a stage, the product line in question and a named competitor, if you know one.

Each opportunity sits in one stage, such as discovery, proposal, negotiation or verbal yes, and the stage changes only when the buyer does something. Attending a demo or reviewing a quote counts as buyer action, and a salesperson’s confidence does not move the stage on its own.

The close date is a promise about when the buyer will decide, so review it every week alongside the next step and its date. A date in the past with no logged call or email is a stale record, and stale records inflate the pipeline report.

The quote attaches here. Each revision hangs off the opportunity, so you can see that version two replaced version one and exactly which version the buyer accepted.

Some systems call the won opportunity a deal and others use deal for the whole thing, so pick one meaning and write it down in the sales manual. The cleanest rule is that an opportunity becomes a won deal when the buyer accepts the quote or sends a purchase order, whichever arrives first.

A won deal hands over to delivery. It creates the sales order, the project or the first invoice, depending on your business, and the delivery team sees the quote the buyer accepted. A lost deal records the reason, then stops.

Never delete lost deals. A year of loss reasons is the best evidence you hold on pricing, lead time, product gaps and the competitors who keep winning your quotes.

Write one sentence for each record covering what creates it, what changes its status and what closes it, then share the page with every salesperson. Then check twenty existing records against it and move any that sit in the wrong place, such as a quote hanging off a bare lead.

Do this before importing old spreadsheets. Messy imports mean messy pipelines.