Salesforce Opportunity Management

Companies and businesses all around the world are looking for higher sales rates and the speed and scale at which companies can now execute their sales process do not allow outdated and old lead management processes to be used. In this competitive world, there should be no doubt left that Salesforce is the most powerful CRM to date which helps in keeping the entire sales process well organized ultimately increasing the sales revenue The question arises, what is Opportunity Management in Salesforce? 

What is Opportunity Management in Salesforce? 

Opportunity Management in Salesforce represents a sales deal that takes place between your customer and the company. It is the process and the specific guidelines you establish for managing and organizing data in Salesforce. At the same time, the sets of tools can help you stay connected to the people and information you need, to close every sale with anyone from anywhere in the world. Besides, Opportunity Management gives you information about the sales that have been completed, the sales that might be happening in the future, or the lost potential sales. 

Significant advantages of Salesforce Opportunity Management 

Why is Opportunity Management in Salesforce so important? Here is why… 

•  There is always a risk of committing mistakes even if your sales team comprises up to twenty people. Opportunity management of salesforce helps in clear forecasting and minimizing the mistakes and risk of dealing with inaccurate information.
• Opportunity management of salesforce helps in getting a better insight into sales performances.

Opportunity management process flow – 

A flow in opportunity management in salesforce is an application that automates and helps a business process by collecting data and using it in salesforce for the benefit of the company.

Salesforce Leads vs. Opportunities: what’s the difference?

In order to optimize the salesforce opportunity management, the first thing to know is the difference between salesforce leads and opportunities.

LEAD: A person who has either shown interest or who you think should be contacted to initiate the sales process. Efficient lead handling has always been the key to generating good sales and income. Lead management is the process of tracking and converting leads into sales. That particular client is considered to be the top priority of a company that aims at good sales.

Lead management – There are 3 stages in refining the lead: Definition, nurturing, and closure.

OPPORTUNITY: An opportunity doesn’t refer a person or to a company. It indicates a future sale with increased potential.

Steps to Fruitful Salesforce Lead and Opportunity Management

1. Maximize your exposure 

The first and foremost step in starting the salesforce lead and opportunity management process flow is to attract as many buyers as you can. If there is a greater number of people attracted to your product, there’s a greater chance for them to become your potential customer, and that directly increases the sales of your company. There are many third-party lead-generating tools that can help bring in more prospects for a company.

2. Expound lead standards 

In order to categorize leads and to check where the leads belong, internally set standards need to be looked upon. For example, leads are to be converted to accounts once they’re qualified. But every company has its own way of defining “qualified”.   Organizing leads by priority is a very important step in salesforce opportunity management. This helps in determining which leads are to be more focused on because there’s always a risk of them being stolen away by other competing companies and businesses.

3. Automation of lead data source

Companies generate lead data from different sources, like their marketing platforms, ad accounts, online forms like the very popular google forms, events, and many other platforms, etc. Entering data manually from all of these sources increases the risk of human error, forgotten leads, and ultimately lost opportunities and that is where salesforce plays it very vital role.

4. Use customized lead status options

Customized lead status options provide better clarification about the lead. They help in the internal communication of the sales team and can help with the nuances in lead status that the default options don’t allow. For example, a lead may be qualified according to the company’s way of defining “qualified” but may not be in the buying cycle so in that case, they may need some nurturing before they can be officially converted to an account or contact and ultimately an opportunity.

An option of “Nurture” can be used to indicate that this particular lead has potential and can be turned into a contact in the future. A lead nurturing program in the salesforce opportunity management process is considered to be successful if it focuses on marketing and makes communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects and providing the information and answers they need. The main purpose of this whole process is to build trust.

5. Don’t leave unqualified leads hanging. Cultivate them.

Some leads may be unqualified at the time but they could change to qualified ones if you make some changes to the criteria. Never let the unqualified ones go to waste.

So how do you decide what you are supposed to do with these unqualified leads?

There might be circumstances when you may suddenly need these leads and you want to be the first ones they contact . Define alternative paths for your unqualified leads like inviting them to online webinar events. You also need to know when an unqualified lead just isn’t the right fit for your pipeline.

6. Define opportunity conversion criteria

Accounts and contacts are only to be converted to opportunities when they have a very high buying potential . Opportunities in your Salesforce pipeline should only be those potential deals that require some final steps in the sales process to be closed.

These final steps are different for every company. 

Salesforce pipeline – Salesforce pipelines give us an approximate of how many business salespeople expect to do in a particular week, month, or year and in turn, you can use that expected data to estimate how much sales revenue is coming into your business, and when.

7. Continuous monitoring of the performance

Salesforce opportunity management provides you the ability to leverage analytics and this can significantly improve sales performance. Optimize your Salesforce lead and opportunity management to the maximum by putting processes in place to leverage data through frequent reporting and measurement of key KPIs.

CONCLUSION: 

The opportunity management process in salesforce is very vital in increasing the sales of a company and generating good profit. The whole process of Opportunity management in salesforce is a sure way to boost your strategy, improve sales performance, and provide a better working experience for both your employees and customers.