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How to Work with a Sales Flow in OroCRM

November 5, 2016 | Oro Team

Welcome to OroCRM’s video tutorial series.  This is Alex with OroCRM and today I’ll be demonstrating how to work with the native OroCRM sales flow.  This flow will begin with a new Lead, progress through Opportunity creation, and conclude by closing the Opportunity.

This flow is a common scenario if your business utilizes a sales team.  The out of the box process will often fit most business’s general sales flow, however, modification of the workflow is possible to fit your business’s specific needs.   

Before diving into the flow, let’s clarify some terminology:

  1. Lead – A person who may be interested in doing business, any fish in the sea
  2. Qualified Lead – A person who is a potential customer
    1. Examples include:
      1. Someone in the market for your product
      2. Someone unhappy with their current provider or product
  3. Disqualified Lead – A person who is not a potential customer
    1. Examples include:
      1. Bad contact details such as invalid email or telephone
      2. Person does not a use your type of product
  4. New Opportunity – Chance to make a deal
  5. Closed Won Opportunity – A deal that has been closed with a sale
  6. Closed Lost Opportunity – A deal that has been closed without a sale

For this example we will begin with a brand new Lead.  Navigate to Sales > Leads and select our new Lead.

When working a new Lead we will want to perform some kind of outreach to verify if this Lead is a qualified Lead or not.  Typically this will be done through activities such as phone calls or emails.  

In my case I will log a telephone call that I just finished.  This customer expressed interest in the widgets I have available for sale so I know he is a valid customer.  

In addition, this Lead has asked me to call back later today to review options.  For this purpose I will create an event for later today by clicking the actions menu and selecting “Add Event”.

Finally, since I know this is a qualified customer, I will Qualify him by clicking the Convert to Opportunity icon in the top right hand corner of the page.  This will open the create Opportunity page.

While there are many fields presented here only the Account field is required.  The Account field here is actually the combination of an Account record and a Business Customer.  

If this is a new Lead, like my example here, I will need to create these related records.  Fortunately this is as easy as simply filling in the field, watch for new to appear in parenthises,  and clicking enter.

While other fields are not mandatory it is good practice to take detailed notes.  In my case I will fill out the entire Opportunity.  

By default changing the Opportunity status will automatically change the related probability field.  This mapping is configured under System > Configuration > CRM > Sales Pipeline > Opportunity.

Note, if you manually change the probability the field in an opportunity it will no longer automatically be updated through status changes.

Additional activities related to the Opportunity can be added anytime from the actions menu.

There are 3 different ways to transition an Opportunity through statuses:

  • First is by opening the Opportunity and clicking the edit button.  
  • The second is by using inline grid editing available from the Opportunity list view page
  • Finally, by dragging and dropping from within the Opportunities Board view

As Opportunities are updated and moved through transitions this will impact pipeline reports and dashboard widgets.

Once the deal is at its end the final statuses that should be set are closed won and closed lost.  These two represent the 100% and 0% probability choices respectively.  While the goal is always closed won, closed lost is important as well.  

When setting these ending statuses don’t forget to set the close reason.  This is can be later used for reporting and analytics to determine what improvements sales managers can make.

In addition to all of the steps mentioned up until now there is an additional way to work with Opportunities.  Opportunities have a workflow that is available out of the box but disabled.  

To enable this workflow navigate to System > Workflows, then select Opportunity Management Flow and click Activate.

Upon activation there will be a few changes made throughout OroCRM.  Any opportunities already created or in progress can be worked without the workflow if desired, otherwise the workflow can be started by clicking the “Start Opportunity Management Flow” button.  

All newly created opportunities will begin with the workflow enabled.  

On the Opportunity view page there will be several new buttons.  These buttons are Develop, Close as Won, and Close as lost.

Clicking the Develop button will open a popup modal which will allow for modification of the most relevant fields in the Opportunity.  Again modifying the status of the Opportunity will automatically adjust the probability field.

You’ll note that while editing the Opportunity status you no longer have the option to select Closed Won or Closed Lost.  This is because this functionality is now handled by workflow step buttons within the Opportunity itself.

Clicking either of these Close As buttons will prompt you for values related to the close option selected.  Close as Won will request Close Revenue and Close date while Close as Lost will request a Close Reason and Close date.

Thanks for watching.  You can check out more videos at our CRM training center.

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