Leads are created from contact records (Create a Lead Record from a Contact) and are a way to track potential business before you have a scope of work (to start a project) and before you want to start involving other users in your company in the process. Anyone can create a lead record as long as you have access to the contact record.
Lead records also track your marketing efforts using Marketing Campaigns.
Even if you are just going to create a project directly, you should create a lead if the customer (or potential customer) came to you by way of a marketing effort. This will allow your managers to evaluate whether a marketing campaign was effective or not and whether it is worth doing again.
In this section, we will explore how leads can help you stay on top of potential sales and how your company can benefit from analyzing why leads are not converting to sales.