People are the contacts you've decided to engage in business with. They might be a customer who's ready to formally evaluate your product or service, or they might be more of a partner or vendor you work beside. If you're a B2B operation, you may create company records related to your people records for context around the business you're working with. 

People, companies and opportunities (which we'll learn about in the next module) are often created as the result of leads getting qualified. They can also be created from scratch. 

In this module, we'll tackle the following:

• Understand people
• Understand companies
• Understand the relationship between these records
• Define your workflow
• Convert a lead to a person, company or opportunity
• Create a person or company

Understand people

People are the contacts you've decided to engage in business with. This could be a customer who's ready to formally evaluate your product or service, or a partner or vendor you partner with in a business deal. People may be converted from a qualified lead, or you might not use leads at all and just add your contacts directly to Copper as people. 

You'll access people from this icon in the left-hand menu:

Understand companies

A company is a business entity that is ready to formally evaluate your product or service, or a business entity you've worked with in the past who you might work with again in the future. A company could be a business, a school, an association, or any other entity that links people together. Company records are often related to people records, as you need a human contact to speak on the company's behalf and move the business deal forward.

You'll access companies from this icon in the left-hand menu:

Understand the relationship between these records

Take a look at the image below:

The image above shows a lead being entered into the system, then qualified. As we recall, A qualified lead is the one we've decided to do business with. After qualifying a lead, you turn it into a person record. This person might stand alone, but more likely, you'll relate the person to a company record, an opportunity record or both. 

Define your Workflow

Use the following prompts to brainstorm how you'll use these records:

1. If you used leads, these will be directly converted into people. If you don't use leads, people are still pretty essential to have in your system - you need someone to pay you for this transaction. Write down how your human contacts will relate to your opportunities. Are they buyers, donors, job-seekers, etc.? This will help you be swift and clear when deciding what people to add to your system later on. 
2. Decide if you'll use companies. A B2B company using Copper will definitely use companies, as they're selling to a business via the person who is their contact. A B2C company may choose not to add company records. Write down how companies would apply to your use case and relate to your opportunities and people.

Convert a Lead to a Person, Company or Opportunity

1. Click a name from the 'First Name' column in your list of leads.
2. Click the 'Convert lead' blue button on the lead's profile page.
3. As we recall from creating a lead, all you needed was a name. If that's all you have in the lead profile, only a person record will be created from the conversion. 
4. If you want to create a company, enter a name in the 'Company' field.
5. If you want to create an opportunity, make sure the 'create an opportunity for this contact' box is checked and fill in the 'Opportunity Name' and other details.
6. When you're done filling in the person, company and/or opportunity details, click 'convert.'

Create a person or company

All record types can be created the same way. Choose whether it benefits you to learn to create a lead, person or company, then follow the instructions below:

1. Sign into your Copper account and click the '+' icon in the header.
2. Select the record type you'd like to create from the drop-down that appears:

3. Fill in the details for this record in the pop-up window that appears. Click 'Save' when you're finished:

4. The resulting record will look something like this:

To the left, we have all the details you filled out when creating this person, plus any info we pulled from their publicly-available social media. In the center, you can track your interactions with this contact. To the right, we have the associated records and files that lend context to this person.

Advance to the next step: Establish your Pipeline and Create Opportunities