Using Opportunities Effectively

Opportunities are the foundation of sales and drive growth for any business. Working on an opportunity involves moving from one stage to the next as you get closer to closing a deal. This is referred to as a pipeline or funnel in some organizations. The reason it is called a pipeline or funnel is that you usually have more opportunities in the earlier stages of a deal—the top of the funnel—and fewer opportunities in the later stages—the bottom of the funnel. Each stage is tied to a percentage of the likelihood of closing the opportunity. These percentages tie into the forecasting of future sales. 

The following topics are discussed in this chapter:

• Using opportunities and understanding their creation
• Understanding the opportunity stages and their contribution to the sales process, as well as the sales path and how it ties into the opportunity stages
• Understanding the contact roles for opportunities
• What opportunity products are and how they are created to drive an opportunity
• What quotes are and how they are created and used with opportunities
• Using forecasting and seeing how opportunities drive your forecast

With the help of these topics, you will be able to develop the required skills to create an opportunity and see what an opportunity record contains. You will be able to create contact roles, opportunity products, and quotes and be able to see how the opportunity stages drive the sales path and forecasting. These skills will allow you to get a full picture of the sales cycle that we started in Chapter 3, Creating and Managing Leads.