An Opportunity is a sales or pending deal related to an Account or Contact that you can track. When using Salesforce, you can convert existing accounts or a qualified lead into an Opportunity. It is directly associated with Revenue and is neither a business nor a person but a potential future sale.
When utilizing Salesforce Opportunities, you can see key details about deals, who the involved members are, and the amount of potential sales to be expected. You can also add important documents such as contracts and data sheets, log sales calls, write down notes, set up calendar events for client interaction, and send emails.
Opportunity Stages
An Opportunity goes through different stages depending on the task being performed and how likely it is that a sale will be made. The Opportunity stages are the following:
1. Prospecting
2. Developing
3. Negotiation/Review
4. Price Quoting
5. Closed/Won
6. Closed/Lost
It is important to discuss with your sales team how each stage is defined and how they will be used. You are also free to add your own custom stages. Make sure they are easy to understand for your salespeople who will be using them regularly. As your sales moves deals from one stage to the next, they need to update the record so it reflects the current stage that an opportunity is in.
You may also create an Opportunity Team on Salesforce which allows team members to work together and track the progress of an opportunity. An Opportunity Team is considered a temporary group since it only lasts until a deal is closed.
Every time you add an opportunity, you are building a pipeline which will affect how your forecast looks like. An opportunity can also be linked to marketing campaigns to help you determine how much return of investment was gained from your marketing efforts.