I am regularly asked in Vtiger training / consulting sessions, “Should I use opportunities as part of my sales process in VtigerCRM?”. There are trade offs — sometimes the answer is simple and sometimes it’s complex.
Some things to take into account:
- Never lose track of the fact that sales people hate doing sales tracking and will subvert it any chance they get unless it is SUPER EASY. You may want the information very badly, but if you don’t make it easy you will get passive aggressive subversion or rebellion.
- There are a fair number of built in capabilities (dashboards/reports) in Vtiger to track sales by opportunity but there are very few for quotes and invoices.
Sometimes the answer is simple… use opportunities when:
- You have very large, complex sales with multiple quotes that are part of the same sales opportunity
- You want to start tracking the sales progress prior to the quote
- If you don’t use Vtiger Quotes, but you need to track your sales
- You have multiple sales opportunities during the client life cycle
- You have a subscription product with a relatively low renewal rate and improving renewals % is critical
Don’t use opportunities if:
- You use quotes early in the sales process. Sales people will not like keeping a quote and an opportunity up to date. Just track the progress on the quote.
- It is a one-and-done sale and you only sell one product (there are exceptions)
- It is a one pitch sale. There is no progress over time to track.
- You have a high close rate on a renewal sale (e.g. getting 95% annual renewal on system maintenance). You are basically taking orders at this point and you just want to make sure the calls are made.
Please share your ideas on this topic.
