Yes - we are tracking sales. We are event managers. Primarily we are tracking sponsorship opportunities plus event management resources and participants with a dispersed and varied management team.

We are new to solve and are finding our way towards ‘our’ system. Due to time constraints and the cut and try nature of the process so far I have been a diligent lurker but a negligent poster :) , very appreciative of both the solve teams and user’s contributions to my education

Yes, we are starting to track opportunities.  We’re short of sales staff at the moment, but I see this as being one of there core functions.  The only issue I had with opportunities in Solve was deciding at what point to put the opportunity down, and whether this should go in Contact or Project.  This is more indecision on my part as I’ve had similar dilemas using Salesforce.

Carl Benfield - Jun 20, 2010 02:32pm

Yes, we are starting to track opportunities.  We’re short of sales staff at the moment, but I see this as being one of there core functions.  The only issue I had with opportunities in Solve was deciding at what point to put the opportunity down, and whether this should go in Contact or Project.  This is more indecision on my part as I’ve had similar dilemas using Salesforce.

Hi Carl,

My recomendation is to start tracking the lead as a potential client as early as you can… you’re better off chasing them down until you get that no, than to accidentally forgetting about them and letting it go cold.

If you start the sales process as soon as you can in your funnel, you’ll find that you’ll have a clearer way to consistently follow your clients and put them through your sales cycle.

I do recommend using more than just the opportunities activity. I’ve set up multiple custom fields to track what to do with the lead in the form area and use the opportunity page only to track wins or losses or as an extra reminder of what they may potentially by. OR you can add extra fields in the opportunity for better data collection in your sales process for opps. The only problem is it’ll take a few steps at this point to use the data until better sales force automation/reporting is down. No problem there, I put more metrics above the fold for instant bird’s eye view of what to do.

Solve right now is already quite good for sales tracking, IF you design a good workflow with your sales cycle.

Hi Ronald,

Thanks for posting this topic, it’s one that we’re trying to refine at this very moment.  We market a reporting service and have just recently started using Solve to track our progress.  So far, it’s proven to be a great product.  One thing we are having trouble deciding whether to use tags or form fields for this task, or both.  Here is our thinking:

Forecasting Stages (high level) - using tags
1.  No Contact Yet (these are bulk leads we have)
2.  Prospecting
3.  Demoing
4.  In Trial
5.  Client

Other:
a. Abandoned
b. Lost in Trial
c. Lost Client
(reason codes for the above mentioned stages will be added either as a tag and/or form fields in the sales process below)

Sales Process (low level) - using tags and/or form fields??
- HOT
- COLD
- Budget
- Bad Lead
- Features
- Can’t Make Contact
- Proposal
- etc, etc, etc

Any ideas or thoughts on what the best method is?  I’m new enough to Solve I don’t fully know the ramifications tags vs form fileds has on reporting/sorting….

Thanks!
Craig

Hi Craig,

Hey, welcome to Solve. You know, it’s hard to really give you a good in-depth answer off the forum, as a conversation would be better to figure out what you want to/should do.

But from what you wrote, I would use a combination of fields and tags. Use the fields for all of the above and just change the fields according AFTER each contact AND take notes after each contact in the blog area below.

But also use tags to make 1) a super hot list 2) to segment the type of lead/buyer they are and what they want 3) if there are relevant to an event or campaign and 4) to use the group email function.

It’s best for you to make process map of your sales cycle from beginning to win/lose and then you’ll be able to make the correct fields for Solve.

Hope that helps.

Yes we do sales tracking. Here’s what we do.

I’ve created a Status field for companies in which every company must have a sales status.  These are:

Opportunity/Interest
Keep in Touch  
Different Approach Needed
No Contact/Prospect
Marketing Bucket  
Not Applicable/Waste or Time

If a Company is Opportunity/Interest it may have a valid Sales Opportunity.  To do this we create a Blog with the Opportunity Name and set a Tag to “Opportunity”.
We then add the Track Revenue Opportunity against the blog.

We use the blog so that we can track correspondence and documents related directly to the opportunity.  We sell complex solutions so we may have several different Revenue Opportunities against one sales opportunity.

Ronald - Jun 27, 2010 09:11pm

Hi Craig,

Hey, welcome to Solve. You know, it’s hard to really give you a good in-depth answer off the forum, as a conversation would be better to figure out what you want to/should do.

But from what you wrote, I would use a combination of fields and tags. Use the fields for all of the above and just change the fields according AFTER each contact AND take notes after each contact in the blog area below.

But also use tags to make 1) a super hot list 2) to segment the type of lead/buyer they are and what they want 3) if there are relevant to an event or campaign and 4) to use the group email function.

It’s best for you to make process map of your sales cycle from beginning to win/lose and then you’ll be able to make the correct fields for Solve.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Ronald, I appreciate the thoughts.  We had thought about assigning a level of interest; “HOT” as a form field for each company, and simply check the box “HOT” if the lead is Hot.  Is there a reason why we should do it via a tag instead of on the form? 

Cheers,
Craig

Hi Craig,

To me, tags mean ‘hot - do something with these ASAP’ type contacts. They are great for temporary, ever changing and event oriented contacts (past and future events). Anything that is part of your real workflow that is consistent I would put into form fields.

As for the “hot” designation, this is one of the ones I would put in both the form fields and tag. Yes, it may be redundant, but the tag tells you to get on it NOW and the field is just a part of your overall snapshop of the contact amongst other fields.