Sales & Service Cloud Essentials

Sales Cloud

Leads → conversion

A Lead is an unqualified prospect. Converting a lead creates (or matches) an Account, a Contact and optionally an Opportunity.

• Map custom lead fields to account/contact/opportunity fields (Lead Field Mapping) so data isn't lost.
• Converted leads become read-only (IsConverted = true).
• Lead assignment rules route new leads to users or queues; web-to-lead captures website forms.

Opportunities

• Stages (Prospecting → … → Closed Won / Closed Lost) each map to a probability and forecast category.
• Sales Processes + record types allow different stage sets per business unit.
• Products & Price Books: Product2 → PricebookEntry → OpportunityLineItem; the Opportunity Amount becomes the sum of line items.
• Opportunity teams and splits for shared credit; Forecasts roll up by role hierarchy.

Campaigns

Track marketing efforts; Campaign Members link Leads/Contacts; campaign influence relates them to opportunities.

Service Cloud

Cases

• Created via email-to-case, web-to-case, phone, chat/messaging, or manually.
• Assignment rules route cases to users/queues; auto-response rules send acknowledgement emails.
• Escalation rules reassign or notify when a case isn't handled in time (e.g. High priority unanswered after 4 hours).
• Support processes define Status values per record type.

Entitlements & milestones

• Entitlements define what support a customer is owed.
• Milestones (e.g. First response within 1 hour) track SLA steps with warnings and violations.

Agent productivity

• Omni-Channel pushes work to agents based on capacity and skills.
• Knowledge articles help agents and customers (self-service).
• Macros and quick text speed up repetitive replies.

Interview questions

1. What happens when you convert a lead? → Account, Contact and (optionally) Opportunity are created; the lead is marked converted.
2. Assignment rule vs escalation rule? → Initial routing vs time-based reassignment/notification.
3. How do you keep custom lead fields after conversion? → Lead field mapping.
4. What are queues used for? → Group ownership of records (leads, cases, custom objects) until someone picks them up.