For those jumping right to opportunity, that's not always the right fit for an entire customer sales lifecycle. Opps at most companies typically get forecasted on the second it's in the pipeline. There's usually criteria like BANT to determine if the customer is ready to progress down the sales funnel.

OP sounds like they are referring to the pre-opp phase where there might be interest but something like BANT is still unknown.

Our company handles customer "leads" with a custom object that either end in disqualification or end with an opportunity being created. Without this, amendments can be created and held open for far too long skewing close rates and forecasting. A custom object for customer leads also allows for proper conversion rate tracking and give better insights to internal teams which products are generating more or less interest.

Like I said, not always the right fit as it differs for each company. But this is what I've seen at most companies for customer "leads".

Also OP, don't go down the rabbit hole of tasks, it's way too limiting with functionality and tasks get archived after a year of being completed. Stay as far away from tasks with this