Opportunities

Overview

Use the Opportunities module to create and manage sales opportunities, qualified leads, and view related records.
An opportunity specifies the estimated amount of a sales deal and is tied to a sales stage. A sales stage, such as Qualification, Closed Won, or Closed Lost identifies how close you are to making the sale. The administrator defines and sets the sales stage depending upon the requirements in your organization. The estimated amount can vary depending on the sales stage.

Sales stages

Based on the sales stage, the system calculates the probability of a sale. For example, at the Proposal sales stage, the system calculates the probability as 65%, and at the Negotiation sales stage, probability increases to 80%.
The following are the default sales stages in Sugar:
Prospecting. This is the first stage in the sales process and indicates that the opportunity with this prospect is new and needs to be qualified by a sales representative.
Qualification. The sales representative is currently interacting with the prospect to determine if a sales opportunity exists.
Needs Analysis. The sales representative uncovers the prospect’s business problems (having determined that the prospect is interested in the products or services).
Value Proposition. The sales representative maps the company’s products and/or services to the prospect’s business problems and describes the value of the solution (having uncovered the prospect’s business problems).
Id. Decision Makers. The sales representative identifies the decision makers necessary to close this opportunity (having determined that there is a match between the prospect’s business problems and the company’s products and/or services).
Perception Analysis. The sales representative analyzes the prospect’s perceived value of the company’s solution to prepare the appropriate combination of products and services for a sales quote.
Proposal/Price Quote. The sales representative delivers the proposal or price quote to the prospect.
Negotiation/Review. The sales representative reviews and negotiates the proposal with the prospect.
Closed Won. The sales representative has won this opportunity and the company can now bill the customer.
Closed Lost. The sales representative has lost this opportunity.
Every opportunity must be associated with an account. You can associate an opportunity with only one account but you can associate it with multiple leads and contacts.
You can associate an opportunity with a campaign to track the campaign’s effectiveness in generating opportunities for your organization. Any campaign-related opportunity that generates revenue is reflected in the campaign’s ROI (Return on Investment) chart. For more information, see Viewing a Campaign’s Return on Investment.
Note:
You can associate an opportunity with only one campaign.

Creating Opportunities

You can create Opportunities in Sugar, or you can import them into Sugar using a comma-delimited, tab-delimited, or custom delimited file. You can create an opportunity not only from the Opportunities module, but also from the Convert Lead page, and from the Detail View of Accounts, Contacts, or Quotes.
To create an opportunity
1.
Click Create Opportunity from the Actions bar on the Opportunities tab.
Or, click the Create icon on any page within the Opportunity module.
2.
Enter the following information in the Create(Opportunity) page:
Opportunity Name. Enter a name for the opportunity.
Account Name. Enter the name of the account related to the opportunity. To choose from the list of existing accounts, click Select.
Currency. Select the currency used from the drop-down list.
Expected Close Date. The expected or estimated close date for this particular opportunity.
Opportunity Amount. Enter the estimated amount of the sale.
Type. Use this drop-down list to specify whether the opportunity is from an existing customer or a potential customer.
Sales Stage. Specify the current status of this opportunity from the drop-down list. The value specified for the Sales Stage determines the default value displayed in the Probability field on the Opportunity page.
Lead Source. Use this drop-down list to specify the lead source such as Trade Show or Cold Call.
Probability (%). Sugar determines the values for this field based on the selected Sales Stage value. For example, if the Sales Stagevalue is Closed/Won, then the probability changes to 100%. You can manually change the Probability% value.
Campaign. To associate an opportunity with a campaign, enter the campaign name or click Select to select it from the Campaigns list.
Next Step. Enter the next step in closing a sale.
Description. Enter a brief description of the opportunity.
Specify the following information in the Other section:
Assigned to. Enter the name of the individual you want to assign to the record or click Select to choose from the User List. By default, this record is assigned to you.
3.
Click Save to create the new opportunity; click Cancel to return to the Opportunity home page without saving the information.

Managing Opportunities

Managing Opportunities includes tasks such as editing, deleting, importing, and exporting records.
To manage Opportunities
To sort a list view, click any column title which has the Opportunities.09.1.1.jpgicon beside it; to reverse the sort order, click the column title again.
To edit or delete information related to multiple opportunities, select multiple records in the Opportunities List View and click the Mass Update link in the Actions drop-down list. For more information, see To edit or delete multiple records.
To import records, select Import Opportunities from the Actions bar on the Opportunities tab. For more information on importing data, see Importing Data.
To export records, select the records from the Opportunities List View, click Export in the Actions drop-down list and follow the process described in Exporting Data.
To merge duplicates, select the records from the Opportunities List View, click Merge in the Actions drop-down list and following the process described in To merge duplicate records from the List View.
To view the details of an opportunity, click the opportunity name in the List View.
To edit the details, on the detail page, click Edit.
To duplicate an opportunity, click Duplicate on the Detail View page. Duplication is a convenient way of creating a similar opportunity. You can change the information in the duplicate record to create a new opportunity.
To delete an opportunity, click Delete on the Detail View page.
To track changes to an opportunity over time, click the View Change Log tab on the Detail View of the page.
To view and manage related records in a sub-panel, see To manage related information in sub-panels.
To archive a related email, scroll down to the History sub-panel in the Detail View and click Archive Email. This displays theCreate Archived Emails page. Copy-paste information related to the email into the Create Archived Emails page and save it for your records.
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