When organizations implement Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE), they often underestimate the power of the Lead Table. Many organizations let a narrow definition of the term “lead” limit one of the greatest advantages that Dynamics 365 has over other customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The Lead Table plays a critical role in supporting CRM data quality, aligning marketing and sales, underpinning business decisions, and improving visibility into pipeline activity.
What to Know About the Lead Table
A lead represents business potential and can reflect either new business from a new company or the expansion of business (wallet share) from an existing customer.
Sometimes, the business potential presents itself as a form submission, a trade show attendance, or an e-book download. In other instances, sales reps identify target prospects that have yet to express interest. In both instances, organizations know the pitfalls of creating contacts and accounts in these situations: unvetted records clutter the database, and users may never interact or do business with them.
The Lead Table offers an ideal environment for capturing and qualifying interest before committing accounts, contacts, and opportunities into the database. The Lead Table empowers marketing to track engagement, nurture interest, and assess readiness before assigning them to sales and qualifying them into accounts, contacts, and/or opportunities.
What Are Lead Table Strengths & Use Cases?
One of the Lead Table’s greatest strengths is its flexibility. Lead records typically require less information than accounts, contacts, or opportunities, allowing organizations to capture early-stage interest from webinars, trade shows, website forms, referrals, and other marketing initiatives without burdening users with extensive data entry.
As prospects show stronger intent and meet qualification criteria, organizations can require more data points to advance them through the sales process with greater confidence.
From a technical standpoint, leads can already be associated with a contact and account. The contact is a unique individual who may have more than one business potential (lead) at a given time.
Consider a credit union, where an individual person (contact) may be interested in multiple lines of business at once: a small business loan, an investment advisory account, and a consumer checking account (three unique leads from a single individual). These leads could have drastically different sales processes, timelines, and outcomes, and would generally be assigned to different personnel. Over time, these historical leads provide sales opportunities and support a record of previously expressed interests and potential business—all unified at the contact record (generally displayed as a related “sub-grid” of leads).
Qualified Leads & Attention to Detail
Defining “qualified” leads presents another common challenge. Marketing and sales teams often apply different definitions to support their unique needs. Marketing may classify every trade show attendee as a lead, as these prospects may reflect campaign performance. Sales may only count the trade show leads that represent new (previously unknown) customers. Sales teams often measure performance based on lead qualification rates.
At any rate, artificially high lead counts can negatively influence performance evaluation and compensation. Without a shared definition of each department’s needs, organizations may undermine reporting accuracy and create unnecessary friction between departments. It is feasible to count two discrete metrics: one for marketing leads and another for sales-qualified leads.
What Is the Importance of Lead Nurturing?
Successful lead nurturing begins with clearly defined business processes and qualification milestones. Organizations should agree on:
- The information required at lead creation,
- The criteria needed for qualification, and
- The point at which ownership transfers from marketing to sales.
By aligning these standards, organizations can improve consistency, increase reporting reliability, and help to ensure prompt follow-up on potential opportunities.
In one engagement, the team from Forvis Mazars helped a client reverse this pattern by migrating thousands of non-customer records from accounts and contacts back into the Lead Table. This change provided a distinction between customers and prospects and assisted with shifting the business development focus to customer acquisition in a centralized approach. As a result, the organization improved follow-up efficiency, increased visibility into prospect activity, and strengthened new-customer acquisition efforts.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
The Dynamics 365 CE Lead Table serves as far more than a repository for names and contact information. It functions as a strategic tool that helps organizations capture demand, align marketing and sales processes, support high-quality data, and create a more efficient path from first engagement to revenue-generating opportunities.
When organizations use the Lead Table effectively, it can become a valuable component of a successful Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement implementation.
For more information on Dynamics 365, please reach out to a professional at Forvis Mazars.