My manager wants to know what the sales guys are doing before an opportunity is created.
Here is the scenario:
- We have a full database of contacts we have been doing business with for years. So they are already past the Lead stage.
- Many phone calls, emails etc will be made a day to these contacts to find out if they want to buy anything from us. These are not exactly following up on opportunities but they are hopefully going to get some.
- All these calls relate to certain products the the sales guys are trying to sell but they might literally just be ringing up to say, "Hey do you need anything new from this line of products?"
- If we are the distributor for a certain company's products the manager wants to be able to say they them how much activity we have done to try and sell their products.
I thought every phone call, email etc is basically relating to an opportunity in some way, it's just "Cold" or 0% until something concrete (like the prospect of funding) comes out of it which will warm it up. The products can all be tracked via the opportunity.
He doesn't want to use Opportunity until something more concrete is expected.
Here's my problem.
Do I have to create another entity called Prospect Products that can be created at the start of the sales process that can contain a list of products? This will then be escalated to an Opportunity when it becomes warm enough? It seems like a lot of duplication to me.
How to others deal with tracking activities before they've actually become an opportunity?
I would have thought if the sales guys are just ringing up to see if the customer is interested in anything then it really isn't related to anything yet. Until they know there is something to sell them it's just contact with that customer, when there is something to sell to them it's an opportunity.
*This post is locked for comments
I have the same question (0)
