Lead to won deal: leads, pipeline, quotes and forecast

#Purpose and scope

This chapter follows a sales opportunity from first contact to a won deal. The CRM home page shows the pipeline, weighted forecast, opportunities and attention items. After the win, the order continues in the order-to-cash chapter.

#Before you start

1. Pipeline stages exist in Pipeline stages: each has a code, name, probability, sort order, colour, and Won and Lost flags.
2. Lead sources are set up in Lead sources.
3. Sales teams, members, territories and quotas are in Sales teams, Team members, Territories and Quotas (monthly, quarterly or yearly target and achieved amounts).

#1. Capture and qualify leads

1. Create leads in Leads: name, email, phone, mobile, company, designation, industry, website, source, address and notes. Website contact forms can also create leads.
2. Move the Status through New, Contacted, Qualified, Converted or Lost.
3. Before converting, use the duplicate search (by email, phone or company) to find matching leads and accounts. At least one of the three is required.
4. To combine duplicates, merge the duplicate lead into the surviving one: its activities move to the survivor, blank fields on the survivor are back-filled, and the duplicate is marked merged.

#2. Score and segment

1. In Lead scoring rules define rules as field + operator + value + points. Fields: name, email, phone, mobile, company, designation, industry, website, country, status. Operators: Equals, Not equals, Contains, Is not empty, Is empty.
2. Active rules are evaluated against a lead to set its Score. A lead can be scored individually, or all leads that are not converted can be re-scored in bulk.
3. Group leads with Lead segments, which use the same field and operator conditions; choose Members to see who matches.

#3. Nurture with sequences

1. Build a cadence in Sales sequences and its timed steps in Sequence steps.
2. Enrol a lead or contact; Sequence enrollments lists the sequence, status (Active, Paused, Completed), current step and next action time.
3. Mass outreach uses Campaigns and Campaign members; wording is kept in Comm templates.

#4. Convert a lead

Converting a lead that is not already converted creates an account from the lead’s company, industry, website, contact and address details, and an opportunity named “Opportunity - <company>” linked to that account. The lead is marked converted and keeps links to the new account and opportunity, and a system entry is added to the timeline. A lead already converted is refused (“Lead is already converted”).

#5. Work the pipeline

1. Complete the opportunity in Opportunities: name, account, amount, expected close date, probability and next step.
2. Add product lines on the Line Items tab (Opportunity products); they roll up to the opportunity amount.
3. Open the Pipeline board and drag each opportunity between stage columns to update its stage. An Unassigned column holds deals with no stage.

#6. Issue a quote

1. On the opportunity open the quote tab and choose Issue Quote. The current line items are locked into a numbered, printable Quote / Proposal.
2. If you edit the lines and issue again, a new version (v2, v3 …) is created; a version already sent is not changed.
3. Use Print on an issued version to open the document.

#7. Win the deal

1. On the opportunity open the Win tab and choose Win.
2. If an approval workflow is configured for the win record type, the opportunity shows Win Pending Approval and the win is applied when approved. Otherwise it is applied immediately.
3. The result is a draft sales order built from the opportunity’s product lines, with its order number shown on the opportunity. Continue in the order-to-cash chapter.

#8. Forecast

Sales forecast shows Weighted Forecast (amount × probability of open deals), Commit (won), Best Case (commit plus open pipeline) and Pipeline, by period, stage and owner. Compare against Quotas.