Solve360 Discussion Forums

“Opportunity” improvements

Jan 07, 2011 09:20pm jeffp Apprentice 8 posts	I’ve got a situation I’m not sure how to deal with in Solve360 but I imagine is fairly common: - I’m talking to Contact A. He’s not the highest man on the totem pole in his organization, but he’s got a potential project for us. I enter it as an opportunity. - In our second conversation it becomes clear that we will need to talk to his Boss for approval on the project. I note this in call notes under Contact A. Then I create a new contact for Boss. - I have a call with Boss. Where do I log this? I can log it under Boss, but then I lose the continuity of the sale with Contact A. - Furthermore, this would be a contract with Company, where both Contact A and Boss work. But Opportunity is stuck with Contact A. In order for this to really work here are a few suggestions: - Need ability to move an Opportunity (and potentially all of the comments associated with the opportunity) from one Contact to another Contact/Company - Need the ability to assign multiple Contacts to an Opportunity, at least as “Related to” - Need better ability to assign notes, tasks, etc to an Opportunity directly, and not just to a Contact… - Perhaps more overarchingly, this points to a need for an Opportunity to be an entity on par with Contacts and Companies. Opportunities can relate to Contacts and Companies, and have an “Activity” pane that can spawn task lists and formatted notes, and followups and phone calls, etc, in the same way that Contacts and Companies do. I look forward to your thoughts Jeff

Jan 08, 2011 12:01am KVL Media Lyncean 94 posts	I’m thinking Opportunities should be created with Project Blogs. Then you can associate all contacts necessary and log calls for everyone. Not sure though.

Jan 08, 2011 01:56am dave@vm Lyncean 753 posts	@jeffp - welcome. your main points: - Need ability to move an Opportunity (and potentially all of the comments associated with the opportunity) from one Contact to another Contact/Company - Need the ability to assign multiple Contacts to an Opportunity, at least as “Related to” - Need better ability to assign notes, tasks, etc to an Opportunity directly, and not just to a Contact… Re Point 2: For this reason (but it doesn’t work for everyone) I log all my sales activity under Company. I have 3 simple templates that I insert then tweak to suit: Intro/Discovery Demo / Diagnose Opportunity They are each collapsed in their section headers, so even if there is tons of info in there, once we sale is complete there is minimal info regarding the sales cycle on the screen. We can then add new sections as business continues. This depends on your business, but for us it works, for others tracking the opportunity under contacts is better. We do business with large companies, and my team are much more apt to remember the name of the company/client that we are dealing with vs the name of the primary contact of the sales guy. My philosophy has been that we do business Company to Company. Contacts change, contacts come and go but the company doesn’t. This sometimes differs from Solve’s view or a very contact centric approach, but we’ve made it work. Also long term, well after the sale is complete then we’ve got all the info in one place, even years later. I only keep very specific info about a contact, under Contact such as how we met them, or ‘they like golf’ or ‘he’s an a$$ hole to deal with’ etc. Then, once we close the deal, we start a project blog for the implementation and publish it to the client. Again, this might not work if you have lots of lots of opportunities with the same customer but using section headers for each opportunity should work. If you do, then maybe treating is Opportunity as a Project Blog (at least once it gets to a certain probability or stage in your cycle) might be the way to do. Re Point 1: You can drag Activities (or sections of Activities) from contact to contact, contact to company, company to project etc. Just grab the activity and drag it to the ‘tab’ of the destination and drop it. Then go into the new destination and it will be placed at the top, you can then drag it into place. If you are move from contact to project, just don’t have the windows full screened. Re Point 3-4: you can add custom for fields to any activity so you can add pull downs, notes etc to your opportunities. WorksSpace - Customize Form Fields. This is also why I have a section header called Opportunity in the Company record. Everything about the opp is in there, until we close the deal and start the project blog. Now with all that said you can still leave lots of information under Contacts and use the fairly new Show Related Activities check box to pull things together. Hope this helps.

Jan 17, 2011 12:31pm Engineering SpecialOps Administrator 4124 posts	Now with all that said you can still leave lots of information under Contacts and use the fairly new Show Related Activities check box to pull things together. This is quite useful for presenting “all known information” and is quite relevant to the question. Thanks Dave.

Jan 17, 2011 02:56pm PKJR Lyncean 164 posts	I do what KVL Media said..simple and transparent

Feb 04, 2011 01:27pm Mahmood Al-Yousif Aficionado 17 posts	hmmm… VM’s method looks like very workable for our situation. Certainly worth pursuing. Many thanks for sharing.