Using Leads For Multiple Opportunities

I want to use SuiteCRM for a real estate business. My idea is to use the Leads module to keep track of everybody I might do business with, and then when I determine then is a potential deal, create the opportunity.

Since real estate agents don’t have ongoing business with their clients (like in a typical B2B scenario) I will probably do away with the Accounts module completely. Once a deal is closed, I would update the Lead Status to “Prior Client”

My issue is that I want to use Leads as the main record, and Opportunities to track the specific transactions.

For example, I meet John Smith at the Supermarket; I add him as a lead. He says he wants to sell his house, so I create an Opportunity called “John Smith Home Sale.”

Two days later, John Smith also tells me he wants to buy a new house as well. So I create another Opportunity “John Smith Home Purchase.”

At this point, John Smith has two Opportunities (one for selling a house, and one for buying a house).

Now, suppose a week later John Smith changes his E-Mail address. I want to be able to update a single record to keep track of this (the leads record, in this case).

Then, suppose another week goes by, and John has to go out of town for work for a month. He wants me to start communicating with his wife Jane Smith to manage his leads. I would then add a second Lead related to the Opportunities that we are working on.

So, in summation, I want to use the Leads module to keep track of the PERSON (or people), and the Opportunity module to keep track of the TRANSACTION.

Without complicated modifications to SuiteCRM, will it work like this? Is there any issue updating the Lead Record after an opportunity has been created?

I think this can work well, yes.

I would recommend using the Contacts module instead of Leads, simply because it is the most powerful and complete “Person” module in SuiteCRM, so it should always be used for whatever your primary person record is (the one you describe above as Lead).

This way you will get more functionality.

There is no issue with this.

Thanks for the input. If I use the Contact module to track leads, don’t I lose functionality in terms of the ability to convert to Opportunities and track sales stats?

I’m not sure, and can’t look right now, but this is normally just a question of looking in the UI to see if the options are there or not.

Don’t just think in terms of “convert” operations; sometimes creating a new opportunity linked to your contact (which you can do from the subpanel) is more than enough, and possibly more practical.