Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator free question 4 / 10 · Domain 3: Sales and Marketing Applications
A team returns from a trade show with 300 business cards from people who might buy. Nobody has checked yet whether they are real prospects, and only the people who turn out to be interested should become accounts, contacts, and opportunities. How should the cards be recorded to match Salesforce Help?
- Create them as contacts with a prospect record type, and switch only the interested ones over before adding accounts and opportunities
- Create them as leads, and convert only the people who turn out to be interested, which creates the contact, account, and opportunity
- Create them as opportunities, move only the interested ones to later stages, and then create and link accounts and contacts
- Create them as person accounts, and move only the interested ones into business accounts with contacts and opportunities
Show the answer and explanation
Answer: B
Why this is correct
Salesforce Help describes lead records as the way to track prospects apart from your contacts and opportunities. When you convert a qualified lead, Salesforce creates a contact, creates an account if the company is not already in Salesforce, and can create an opportunity if there is a potential deal. Keeping unchecked people as leads and converting only the qualified ones fits the requirement exactly.
Why the other options are wrong
"Create them as opportunities, move only the interested ones to later stages, and then create and link accounts and contacts" … An opportunity records a pending or potential deal: the related account, the key people, and the expected amount. Help shows opportunities being created when a lead is converted. It does not describe using them to hold people you have not yet qualified.
"Create them as person accounts, and move only the interested ones into business accounts with contacts and opportunities" … A person account is a kind of account, not a holding area for unqualified prospects. Help points to lead records for tracking prospects separately from accounts, contacts, and opportunities, and the step that turns a qualified prospect into those records is lead conversion.
"Create them as contacts with a prospect record type, and switch only the interested ones over before adding accounts and opportunities" … A record type on contacts still puts unqualified people into the contact object, which is exactly what Help says leads are meant to avoid. Prospects are kept apart from contacts in lead records until they are converted.
Key point
Leads that you decide are unqualified are not meant to be thrown away. Help suggests keeping them and revisiting them later to see whether the prospect's needs have changed. Activities and tasks can also be associated with a lead, so any contact before conversion stays on the lead record.