Converting accounts back into leads?

[MM_DTx]

When we stepped up to the 7.2 version we did not do any house cleaning with our accounts prior to the upgrade.  There are quite a few accounts that have  been inactive & we would like to "demote" them to leads & step them through the qualification process.  Is it possible to reverse the leads->accounts process & convert existing accounts back into leads?

[MikeSpragg]

No, I'm afraid not (out of the box) - it's totally possible of course - but only through a customisation from your BP.

[tagersea]

As Mike said you could customize the system to support this request. A low tech way to achieve this would be to create a group of the accounts you want to demote. You could then export these to excel and import them via the Lead Import tool. If all looks good (and you dont need to maintain history records etc for the original accounts) you could use SalesLogix to purge the Account records.

Please backup your environment, test thoroughly, etc.

[fraser1025 · Accepted solution]

I was interested in doing the same thing, i.e. demote "accounts" back into leads. 

I'll investigate the low-tech approach:

1.) export data to csv,

2.) import data into Leads table,

3.) delete targeted Accounts/Contacts from database.

My approach was going to be equally low-tech.  Create a Team called, say, "Requalify" and re-align all the demoted accounts to that "Territory".  Then add users who will be doing the re-qualification to the new Team. 

Are there any specific performance hits to keeping records in the Accounts/Contacts tables?

I'd be interested to hear about other approaches to this situation.

[MikeSpragg]

In terms of performance - no, provided you have adequate indexes it doesn't really matter how many you have.

Mike

[RJLedger]

It just makes things "cleaner" to have leads where they really belong and not mixed in w/all the rest of the stuff.

[DanCarvin]

A customer just requested this capapility...     We're proabably going to script a function to read the current Account record or an Account group and copy it into the Leads table.  We're also adding an accountid foreign key to leads so that the records can be linked and viewers of the Account record can see and link to History & Activities on the Lead.   

With help of a Business Partner SLX can do almost anything you can imagine.