Leads are unqualified prospects — people you haven't yet decided to track as a Contact + Account. They live in their own table until conversion turns them into the standard CRM trio (Account, Contact, Opportunity).
- Open the Leads tab
App Launcher → Leads. Leads are usually created in bulk via Web-to-Lead, list imports, or marketing automation; manual creation is for one-offs.
- Click New
Top-right of the list view.
- Enter Last Name and Company
Both are platform-required. Use "[Unknown]" or the email domain when Company is genuinely missing — leaving it blank is impossible.
- Set Lead Status
Defaults to the first picklist value (often "Open - Not Contacted"). Leave the default unless you know better.
- Add Lead Source and any qualifying detail
Lead Source is critical for marketing attribution — most orgs require it via validation rule even though the platform doesn't.
- Save
Save commits the record. Lead assignment rules and duplicate rules fire here.
Required by the platform. Same rule as Contact.
Required by the platform on Lead — even though Account doesn't exist yet. Use a placeholder like "[Unknown]" if you genuinely don't know.
- Once a Lead is converted, it becomes read-only and cannot be unconverted in the standard UI — only via Apex or a third-party tool. Convert deliberately.
- Lead conversion creates an Account, Contact, and (optionally) an Opportunity in one transaction. If any duplicate rule blocks one of them, the whole conversion fails.
- Custom Lead fields don't auto-map to Contact/Account — you must configure Lead Field Mapping in Setup or the data is dropped on conversion.