Salesforce CRM Basics - Leads and Opportunities

Opportunities are deals in progress. In Salesforce you can create opportunities for existing accounts or by converting a qualified lead.

The opportunity stages you usually go through might look like this:

• Prospecting
• Developing
• Negotiation/Review
• Closed/Won
• Closed/Lost

When determining which stages you will use, consider bringing together some of your sales leaders and key team members to map out your sales process. Determine which of the standard stage names to use and whether to add custom stages for your company. If you customize your stages, make sure that the names are intuitive for your salespeople who will be using them on a daily basis. Make it a semi-annual or annual practice to revisit your sales process and ensure that your stages are still relevant.

In Salesforce, you can set up separate sales processes for each type of sale you make. For example, Cloud Kicks may have one sales process to handle standard retail orders for large quantities of shoes, and a separate process for small, custom shoe orders. Setting up each process takes several steps.

1. Create the opportunity stages needed in the sales process.
2. Name the sales process, and select what opportunity stages are included in that particular process.
3. Optionally, create an Opportunity page layout specific to the process. For example, you might include a field called “Custom Embroidery” on the page layout for the sales process for small, custom shoe orders but not on the page layout for standard retail orders.
4. Create a record type for the sales process. Record types link the sales process to the page layout that goes with it.

Let’s try setting up a new sales process now.

Set Up Opportunity Stages

1. From Setup, click Customize | Opportunities | Fields.
2. Click the Stage field label.
3. Click New.
4. Enter a name for the stage.
5. Enter a number to indicate the probability that any given sale in this stage will be successfully completed. For example, if 1 in 5 deals in this stage complete, enter 20 to indicate 20%.
6. Click Save.

Set Up a Sales Process

You might sell different items using different processes. You must set up at least one sales process in Salesforce, but you can set up additional processes to match how your business actually works.

1. From Setup, click Customize | Opportunities | Sales Processes.
2. Click New.
3. To create the first new process for your organization, create a Master process.
4. Give your sales process a unique but descriptive name. For example, Retail Sales.
5. Optionally, add a description.
6. By default, all stages are included in a new process. Remove stages you don’t want to include by clicking the stage name in the Selected Values area, and then clicking the Remove arrow to move the unwanted stage to the Available Values area. For example, if you qualify all leads before converting leads to opportunities, remove Qualification from the selected values.
7. Click Save.

Create an Opportunity Record Type

The record type is how you link a particular page layout and sales process to a type of product. Record types determine which types of sales opportunities pass through which sales process.

1. From Setup, click Customize | Opportunities | Record Types.
2. Click New.
3. Enter a record type label and a record type name.
4. Select a sales process to apply the record type to.
5. Optionally, add a description of this process.
6. Select which profiles can access the new sales process.
7. Click Next.
8. Apply the page layout to the Opportunity Layout.
9. Click Save.

Create an Opportunity

1. On the Opportunities tab, click New.
2. If your organization has more than one record type for opportunities, select the type that best represents this opportunity.
3. Give the opportunity a name.
4. Select the account that the opportunity relates to.
5. Select a close date for the opportunity.
6. Select the stage that the opportunity is currently in.
7. Salesforce adds a probability based on the stage selected. You can change the probability if it isn’t accurate for this opportunity.
8. Click Save.

As you work on the new opportunity, you’ll change the opportunity stage to indicate your progress toward a sale. In the full Salesforce site, you can edit the record to change the opportunity stage. In the Salesforce1 mobile app, tap Mark This Stage as Complete.

Contact Roles on Opportunities

Contact Roles for opportunities tell you which contacts you’re dealing with for the opportunity, and how each is related to the opportunity. You can also link contacts from other accounts to the opportunity using contact roles.

Add a Contact Role on an Opportunity

1. In the Contact Roles related list of an opportunity, click New.
2. Click the lookup icon to select a contact or person account.
3. Choose a role. If you don’t select a role or the role is set to None, changes you make to this record aren’t saved.
4. Optionally, select a primary contact for this opportunity.
5. Click Save.

It often takes a team to close a deal. In Salesforce, adding an Opportunity Team helps team members work together and track the opportunity’s progress.

Opportunity Teams are a bit like Account Teams. Both allow you to relate particular people at your company to accounts or opportunities. But where Account Team members can be expected to form a long-term relationship with the customer, an Opportunity Team is a temporary group composed of people who can help you close the deal. Being a part of the Opportunity Team gives the team members special visibility into the opportunity, such as updates on Chatter. Salesforce offers the Opportunity Splits feature to incentivize team members to complete the deal.

Enable Team Selling

1. From Setup, enter Opportunity Team Settings in the Quick Find box, then select Opportunity Team Settings.
2. Select Enable Team Selling and click Save.
3. Select which page layouts to include opportunity teams.
4. Optionally, to add the Opportunity Team related list to all opportunities for all users, select Add to users’ customized related lists.
5. Click Save.

Add or Edit Team Roles

If the roles provided don’t match how your company’s sales process works, you can add new roles or change the existing ones.

1. From Setup, click Customize | Opportunities | Opportunity Teams | Fields.
2. Click the Team Role field label.
3. In the Team Role Picklist Values area, do one of the following:
   • Click New to create a new role.
   • Click Rename to give an existing role a different name.
4. Click Save.

Add Members to an Opportunity Team

1. Open the opportunity and navigate to the Opportunity Team related list.
2. Click Add.
3. In the User column, enter the member’s name. Opportunity team members are granted read access to the associated account automatically.
4. Select the member’s opportunity team role.
5. Select the member’s opportunity access level. The access level can’t be less than your organization’s default opportunity sharing access.
6. Specify values for any custom fields that your administrator has created for opportunity teams.
7. Click Save.

If you often use the same team for opportunities, you can create a default opportunity team and automatically add that team to all new opportunities. See Guidelines for Setting Up and Adding a Default Opportunity Team in the Salesforce Help.
Leads are people and companies that you’ve identified as potential customers. You find leads in a number of ways. Many of your leads might be referred to you by your other happy customers. You might also gather leads when customers contact you on your website, stop by your booth at a conference, or through information exchanges with partner companies. In Salesforce, information about leads is stored in Lead records

You don’t have to use leads, but there are some big advantages to using them, like knowing what’s in your pipeline and focusing your energy on the right deals. You can better track, report on, and target marketing campaigns to prospective customers. Leads may help you concentrate on the potential deals most likely to close. They also help executives maintain visibility and help on key deals. If your company has separate sales teams for prospective customers and existing customers, using leads helps everyone work more efficiently.

To control the quality of account and contact data, some organizations only permit accounts and contacts to be created from qualified leads.

If everything is an opportunity, you must use the early stages, like qualification, to segment your unqualified opportunities.

Add a Lead

1. Click the Lead tab.
2. Click New.
3. Enter the first and last name of the lead.
4. If the lead works for a company, enter the company’s name in the Company field. If the lead is an individual consumer, leave the Company field blank.
5. Select a status for the lead. Enter any other information you have available.
6. To have the lead automatically assigned using lead assignment rules, select Assign using active assignment rule.
7. Click Save.

Save your users time by customizing the page layout to select this option by default.

You can also add leads by importing a file into Salesforce or through an automatic process, such as a Web-to-Lead form that collects leads from your business website.

Assign Leads

If Salesforce hasn’t been given rules for assigning leads, you own all the leads you create. Leads created from a web form or other automatic process are owned by the administrator who set up that process. You can manually change ownership of leads to another Salesforce user or to a queue. (Queues are not covered in this course, but you can learn more about them in the Salesforce online help. The assignment process is the same for individual owners and queues.)

It’s more efficient to set up Salesforce to assign leads to the right owners based on criteria, such as where the lead is located, which industry they’re involved in, or the type of products they’re interested in. For example, suppose you have a sales rep, Dan Lang, who handles all sales for companies in the entertainment industry. To have leads assigned to Dan as soon as they’re entered, create a lead assignment rule called Entertainment Leads with the criteria that all lead records with “Entertainment” in the field “Industry” are assigned to Dan Lang.

Before setting up lead assignment rules for your company, you should carefully review your existing business process to determine how leads should be assigned. After leads have been assigned according to your process, be sure to include a catch-all assignment rule to catch any leads who don’t somehow qualify for any other rules.

Set Up a Criteria-Based Lead Assignment Rule

1. From Setup, enter Assignment Rules in the Quick Find box, then select Lead Assignment Rules.
2. Click New.
3. Enter a name.
4. Click Active to turn the lead rule on immediately.
5. Click Save.
6. Click the rule name.
7. In the Rule Entries area, click New.
8. Enter a sort order for the rule. For example, to process this rule before all other lead assignment rules, enter 1.
9. To create a criteria-based lead assignment rule, select criteria are met.
10. Select a field, operator, and value. To assign all entertainment industry leads to Dan, select the field Lead: Industry, the operator equals, and the value Entertainment.
11. Use the lookup icon to find the user to which to assign the lead. If you haven’t created any other users in your Salesforce organization, you can’t select a user.
12. Click Save.

Convert Leads to Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts

When you qualify a lead, you can convert the lead record into an opportunity. You’ll then work your opportunity until you close the deal either by completing it or canceling it.

Qualifying a lead indicates that you believe that the lead has a use for and interest in your products, and that a sale to the lead is a definite possibility. Some businesses choose to qualify leads more quickly than others. The exact criteria for qualifying and converting leads is part of your company’s unique business process.

Suppose you call Aparna at ABC Tech Genius West to talk about her deal. She likes what you tell her, and you’re sure she has a genuine interest in your product. Your lead is ready to be converted to an opportunity.

When you convert a lead, Salesforce uses the information stored in the lead record to create a business account, a contact, and an opportunity. If your organization has person accounts enabled and the lead record didn’t include a company name, the lead is converted into a person account and an opportunity.

Convert a Lead

1. On the Leads tab, select a lead to convert.
2. Click Convert.
3. In the Account Name field, either select a new account or search for an existing one. For existing accounts, details about the lead appear in empty fields. If your company uses person accounts and the lead is an individual consumer, leave the Account Name field blank.
4. If you update an existing person account, the option to overwrite the Lead Source field in the person account with the value from the lead.
5. In the Opportunity Name field, enter a name for the new opportunity or select Do not create a new opportunity upon conversion.
6. Optionally, schedule a follow-up task under Task Information.
7. Click Convert.

If your company doesn’t already have a standard naming convention for leads and opportunities, now’s a great time to implement one. Naming conventions help everyone work more efficiently, because users can more easily locate a deal and understand what each deal on a list is about. A naming convention for opportunities could include a standard method for using product names, new business, add-ons, and quantities. Salesforce automatically appends the account name to your opportunity name.

Now that you’ve converted your lead, you’re ready to work on the deal.