Exploring the Lead Status field

The Lead Status field shows you where you are in the life cycle of working this lead. The lead life cycle is important as this is the beginning of the sales process for any organization. The following flowchart simplifies this process a bit:

From the preceding flowchart diagram, we can understand the following:

1. Once the lead is created, it can be dispositioned in two ways.
2. You will contact the lead to present your product or service and the lead will either be interested in speaking further or not.
3. If not, the lead status is changed to Closed - Not Converted, or in some cases, this status is called Unqualified.
4. If the lead is interested, the status reads Convert.

We will cover conversion in more detail in the next section.

Let's take a look at how these status values appear in Salesforce and what happens when each lead status is chosen. Take a look at the following screenshot:

From the preceding screenshot, we learn the following:

1. Open - Not Contacted: This is the default status when the lead is created and means that you have not logged any activities to this lead.
2. Working - Contacted: This status means that you have reached out and logged activities but you have not received a definitive answer about whether the lead is interested.
3. Closed - Not Converted: This is the status used if you make contact and the lead does not want to speak further. Typically, you would use this value to filter these leads out of the open leads list view that you are working with. Setting this status marks it as a dead lead, which you would want to keep in the system for reporting purposes, but would not want to see in the list view of the open leads that have a chance of being converted.
4. Converted: This status means the lead is interested and would like to speak further.

In this section, we have learned about the importance of the Lead Status field and how the values in this field contribute to the sales process. Let's take a look at what actually happens when a lead is interested in your services and you actually convert a lead.