What would a salesperson be without selling? A deserted island without inhabitants, a sailor without a ship, or the Friends sitcom without Joey? Of course, this is a joke, but this illustrates what Sales Cloud would be without the Opportunities tab. Opportunities are a key feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud. Opportunities is a place where a salesperson looks very often because it is the tab where they plan future sales, which can be carried out for both existing and new customers.
Tip
Sales departments are sometimes divided into separate teams: farmers, individuals who take care of existing clients by upselling new services or products while maintaining relationships, and hunters, salespeople who acquire new orders and sign new contracts. Very often, both teams work with Salesforce Opportunities, but they have different statuses, milestones, or products they sell.
Opportunities themselves are basically a straightforward object, and their records are directly linked to an Account. After creating an Opportunity, you can see simply what Opportunities a specific Account has. There may be more than one if you’re selling various products or services to the same customer or if different sales teams or salespeople are handling these transactions. Let’s see how to create an Opportunity record in Salesforce:
- Go to the record of any Account.
- Click on New in the Opportunities Related List.
- Name the Opportunity and select the close date (for example, three months ahead).
- Choose the current stage of the Opportunity.
- Save the Opportunity.
Tip
The stages available when working with Opportunities are related to a feature called Sales Process that you can configure in Salesforce Setup. The Sales Process feature allows you to create different stages for various types of Opportunities. For example, you may want to have different sales stages for companies that are already your clients, where you just want to upsell them, and different ones for companies that are potential new clients. Perhaps you’d like to differentiate stages based on the products you are selling. Thanks to the Sales Process configuration, you will have the ability to do so.
Filling out the fields on Opportunities and changing stages toward Closed Won or Closed Lost is not the only aspect associated with professional and effective work with Salesforce Opportunities. Working with Opportunities also involves assigning Contacts with whom we communicate on a specific sales matter. Adding Opportunity Products, creating Sales Quotes, or working with the appropriate Opportunities view to make it the most user-friendly are other elements that are worth a more detailed description. Let’s delve into them now.