What is the Lead lifecycle in Salesforce Sales Cloud and how does lead conversion work?

The Lead lifecycle moves a prospect through statuses such as Open, Working, Nurturing, Unqualified, and Converted. Lead Status tracks where the lead is in the qualification process; admins customise picklist values to match the sales process. Lead Scoring (Einstein or custom formula fields) ranks leads by engagement signals or demographic fit. Lead Assignment Rules automatically route new leads (created via Web-to-Lead, import, or manual entry) to the correct user or queue based on criteria such as geography, industry, or lead source. When a lead is qualified, Lead Conversion creates up to three records: an Account (new or matched to an existing one), a Contact, and optionally an Opportunity. Custom lead fields can be mapped to Account, Contact, or Opportunity fields using Lead Field Mapping in Setup so data carries over cleanly. Converted leads are hidden from standard list views and cannot be unconverted without third-party tools.