Hello and welcome to this session on creating
and progressing opportunities.
Opportunities are used within Dynamics 365
for recording potential sales and can also
be used for tracking communications regarding
a potential sale, as well as building pipeline
reporting information.
To create a new opportunity, select the drop
down arrow that you see here on the module
selector. We can then select sales and then
we'll select opportunities.
Once we have the opportunities selected, we’ll
then select this option here in the top left
hand corner marked as new. We can then add
in a little bit further information on what
they are interested in, so I'm going to add
in here “Possible Reconfiguration. Once
we've done that, we can then add in the accounts
the opportunities with and I'm just going
to run a search for a datum like so.
The description could just be a little bit
more detailed than the topic, we can then
recording there the likelihood of this sale
happening, so I'm just committing there a
40% likelihood.
We can track further information for a bit
more detail on the situation and the proposed
need, and then further down the opportunity
we’ll also track any quotes that have been
issued for the work or the products.
So, from here we’re just going to select
save
and now that we've saved the opportunity,
we're now prompted to work through these different
steps with regards to the development stage,
the proposal stage and then finally the closing
of the opportunity.
Now these steps here will do two things for
you. First of all, they'll prompt you to carry
out certain items within the process. So,
for instance on here identifying the contacts
I've identified a company but I haven't identified
who this is with. So this serves as a useful
reminder to carry out those actions, that's
one of the purposes of these steps here.
The other purpose is that it allows you to
create the pipeline reports so that is dependent
on working through each of these steps and
it's worth taking the time to work through
them for that reason. If I isolate opportunities
here at the top of the screen and then select
this icon here to open up the charts, in the
drop-down list I can then select the sales
pipeline reports and we can see how much revenue
here is at the qualify, the developer, the
proposed stage, and that's all dependent on
working through these different steps.
So, I'm going to do that now; I'm going to
identify the contacts - so Alex, and I'm just
going to “Alex Wu”. Now that we've saved
this item here, we've wanted to mark that
we've covered other items by working out the
estimated budgets we can add into here, the
estimated revenue and so forth. Now these
items, they're not mandatory, they're purely
prompts with the way this is set up, but you
certainly can have this area edited so as
these items are mandatory.
Now it may be that we wanted to log the fact
that we've had a phone call about this opportunity,
or we may want to track emails against it,
in the same way that we saw in the activities
video we can add in activities against the
opportunity. So, on here if I add a phone
call and just type in “spoke to Alex regarding
the pricing of the configuration” then select
‘OK’, we can track emails into this area.
It’s exactly the same as we saw earlier,
so we can start tracking that information
on here, we can mark on here that we've carried
out these actions, we can mark the purchase
process.
Now it might be that there's certain items
that sit later on in this process we can click
ahead and mark those as complete. So, it might
be that quite early on we know who the sales
team are, we might have been able to get our
internal review done, so we can click ahead
and mark these items as complete.
However, on our pipeline graph this will still
show as being at the “qualify” stage.
The reason for that is you'll notice that
this goal flag here is still sitting on the
initial qualify stage. To progress it through
the different sections all that we need to
do is just select this option here where it
says, “next stage” and then you'll see
that that's now advanced it on to the next
goal flag like so and that it allows us to
progress through those stages.
So now, on here I can mark on here that we
have the customer need, so add on to here
“replace worn parts, no budget for a new
module” and then we can mark in here a little
bit more detail. I’ll just put in here that
we have identified our competitors. Now you
will notice on here that you have got a little
section there where you can add competitors
in if appropriate so I'm just going to select
on here “Jefferson Distributors” like
so. Then once we've done that I'm just going
to click “next stage” and go in to mark
that we've carried out some extra actions
onto here.
We could then track our appointment using
this activity section and now at this stage
what I'm going to do is just going to mark
up here this opportunity is closed down as
lost. So, if I select up here closed as lost,
we can then record two reasons why an opportunity
may be lost; it may be cancelled, or it might
be outsold so I'm going to select outsold
on this occasion and we can record the actual
revenue. If you want a record of how much
revenue we've missed out on by losing this
sale, we can include that in like so.
The close date which defaults to today's dates,
however it may be that you’re only getting
around to logging this information a day or
two after it's happened and you want to keep
the dates accurate. If that's the case, then
just click the drop down arrow for the close
dates and you can then select an earlier date
like so.
Beneath there we can then select from any
of our competitors and there's some nice out-of-the-box
reports on competitor win lose analysis, and
then we'll select “OK”. I should stress
that this isn't mandatory information, I appreciate
you won't necessarily know this. Likewise,
the actual revenue, although that is required,
it will accept zero as I appreciate you don't
necessarily always know the exact figure you’re
missing out on or who the competitor is when
an opportunity is lost.
So, from there we'll just select “OK”.
That has now closed down that opportunity,
that's opportunity is now read-only and that
can now be recorded for our statistics and
it is taken out of the pipeline reporting.
If, however somebody comes you know back to
you fairly soon after losing an opportunity
and it becomes live again you can reopen an
opportunity and that's what I'm going to show
you how to see now.
All you need to do to reopen an opportunity
you just click this option here where you
see my cursor flashing where we can reopen
the opportunity. It’s now made that live
again, we can then select “next stage”
and then on here we can mark that we've done
the final proposal, sent the thank, done the
debrief and so forth.
Now if I select this option to close as “Won”
we can now see on here we can record the actual
revenue, the figure is taken from the estimated
revenue, but it may have changed slightly
so we can overtype here. Close date defaults
to today's date but again it can be amended
and then we can put a little extra information
in the description. Once that's in place we
can then select “OK” and that's now recorded
that opportunity as “Won” and that opportunity
has now gone to a read-only record.
And that's brought to the end of our session
on creating and managing opportunities with
Microsoft Dynamics 365.
