Hi,

Background:

We want to setup a way for us to communicate with our partners. Our sales process is complex and takes up to 6 weeks. Hence we want to provide back to partners on the stage.

Our requirements are

- 400 to 600 company logins

- logins will be usually a 1- 5 times a year only

- ability to create a lead

- ability to see if a lead is qualified / unqualified

- ability to see the opportunity stage of the qulaiifed lead

The problem we have is the partner portal is $600 per user per year.  This would cost us around $360,000 per year, for a partner to submit a few leads and track the progress.

Currently we "Authenticated sites" as our online signup - this a form that then creates an opportunity for our sales rep. The customers can then log back in and update the form during the sales process.

My question:

If we build a simple site for partners as we did with our signup (which seems a shame as partner portal does all we want) can we attach the "authenticated site user" with the multi leads and opportunities via a record type?

Seems there is a lot of work for us to make something very simple. The big question is can a authenticated user be LINKED to multiply opportunities and leads?

http://www.mansasys.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/features.jpg (could not find this on salesforce.com)

It seems that using the self service portal or the customer portal we can NOT ceate the lead for our sales team.

OR is there just a better way of making a simple way for partner to submit leads and track the progress of the leads?

Many thanks!

Matt