To get the customer through the door, you may be doing all or any of the following:
When you send out the word that you are around and have something valuable to offer, people will come in to check out your product. These are your Leads.
They are called Leads because they may lead you to a sale. Sales people usually work on leads by calling them, building a relationship and sending information about their products or services. It is important to track all this conversation to enable another person who may have to follow-up on that contact. The new person is then able to know the history of that particular Lead.
To create a Lead, go to:
Selling > Lead > New Lead
ERPNext gives you a lot of options you may want to store about your Leads. For example what is the source, how likely are they to give you business etc. If you have a healthy number of leads, this information will help you prioritize who you want to work with.
Tip: ERPNext makes it easy to follow-up on leads by updating the “Next Contact” details. This will add a new event in the Calendar for the User who has to contact the lead next.
The difference is that a Lead is a potential Customer, someone who can give you business. A Customer is an organization or individual who has given you business before (and has an Account in your system). A Contact is a person who belongs to the Customer.
A Lead can be converted to a Customer by clicking on the “Create Customer” button. Once the Customer is created, the Lead becomes “Converted” and any further Opportunities from the same source can be created against the Customer.