In most companies sales is a team effort that requires involvement from multiple individuals all playing a part in moving the prospective customer towards a buying decision. Critical to the success of this process is shared information between the team members so that everyone’s activities are co-ordinated and one person is not working in isolation, blindly ignorant of discussions etc. that are taking place between other staff members and the prospective customer.

The Sales Module of MX-Contact provides the following folders/functionality:

• Opportunities (with sub-folders)

• Projects

• Orders (with Line Item Details)

• Sales Plans

The most common activity associated with the Sales Management aspects of CRM is Opportunity Management, which is essentially management of the sales process and tracking of all activities associated with getting the business in the first instance (as opposed to keeping it once you have the customer).

17.3.1               Opportunity Management

All potential sales to companies and contacts are called Opportunities.  The MX-Contact Opportunity Management facility allows you to collect and report on a variety of information relating to an opportunity such as expected values, probability of closing a sale, estimated close dates and more.

The Opportunities folder shows a listing of all opportunities:

A variety of Views is available to sort, group and filter the information so as to see for example only the “Open” opportunities.

General Information

The General tab records the basic details about the opportunity:

Any number of companies, contacts, users and/or teams can be linked to an opportunity.

In addition all activities (journals, tasks, appointments, documents and e-mail) that relate specifically to that opportunity can be linked to the opportunity so that one can get an overview of what has transpired in the progression of this opportunity.

Details

The Details page typically records the expected values, dates etc. that relate to the opportunity, but then is also used to record the actual detail when the opportunity is either won or lost.

In the case of a lost opportunity one can track who was awarded the business and the reasons (if known).