Now that you understand contact records, let's get to know opportunities. These represent a value-based business deal, which you can track through a series of business stages known as your pipeline.
In this module, we'll tackle the following:
Define an opportunity
An Opportunity is a business deal, a sale or an action that has a monetary value associated with it and a close date (or an ideal date by which you should receive the associated revenue). This could be sale of a product or billing associated with services.
Ideally, you should be in communication with the person associated with the opportunity so you can set a realistic value and close date.
A unique aspect of opportunities is they don't just sit in a list like a person or company. They move through a series of business stages known as your pipeline.
Define a pipeline
A pipeline represents your sales process from start to finish. Each milestone in that process is known as a stage, which you move your opportunities through. Your pipeline stages will be defined according to what steps are involved in meeting your end goal.
For example, if you’re a traditional Sales company, your Pipeline might look like this:
Qualified → Follow-Up → Presentation → Contract Sent → Negotiation
If you’re instead using a CRM for business development, your Pipeline might look like this:
First Meeting → Partner Meeting → Negotiation → Term Sheet
Or maybe you’re a recruitment firm, and your Pipeline looks like this:
Phone Interview → First In-Person Interview → Second In-Person Interview → Reference Check → Offer Letter
Move an opportunity through your pipeline
Before you take the steps to create an opportunity and move it through your pipeline, check out this GIF to see it in action:
Now that you've seen it in action, give it a try!
Sign into your Copper account, and click 'Opportunities' from the left-hand menu. This actually takes you to your pipeline.
If you don't have any opportunities created yet, click the '+' sign in the upper right like you did in the last exercise to create an opportunity.
On the Opportunities landing page, click the opportunity you created in the previous exercise, and drag it to the right to a new pipeline stage.
Note two things that have happened:
The dollar value below the pipeline stage you moved the opportunity into grew by the value of the opportunity.
Click on the opportunity, and scroll down to the 'Win %' field. You'll notice the value in this field changed to match the win probability of the pipeline stage. This will be an increased win probability if you moved the opportunity to the right since you've moved closer to the close of the deal.
Click the opportunity and drag it toward the bottom of the page. You'll see the 'Lost,' 'Abandoned,' and 'Won' buttons. Drag the opportunity over one of these buttons, and release it.
In the pop-up window that appears for a lost or abandoned opportunity, you can indicate notes about why you put it in this status. In the pop-up window that appears for a won opportunity, you have the option to turn the associated person or company into a current customer; leave notes; and change the close date of the opportunity to today.
The opportunity will remain in the pipeline stage it was in before you took this step, but you'll see a 'Lost,' 'Abandoned,' or 'Won' badge attached to it.