What are Opportunities?

Opportunities are used to record, track and manage your leads and enquiries.

Your sales pipeline is added to and managed from your Opportunities DataGrid where you can quickly lookup contact details from your other accessplanit pages, and build Dashboard Gadgets to report on your pipeline for forecasting.

As an Administrator you also have access to your very own Opportunities Kanban Board which only displays Opportunities that are assigned to you, decluttering your view, and allowing you to focus on the right enquiries.

Continue reading to learn more about Opportunities best practice and common uses of Opportunities, or learn how to use, add, and edit Opportunities within your accessplanit platform.

The opportunities grid has a column called “Expected Revenue”. This column relies on Probability * Value.

For example, if the cost is £100 and the probability is 0, then 0 * 100 = 100

Please contact our support team if you require any assistance on this at: (+44) 01524 389 841 or the portal: https://accessplanit.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2

Where to find Opportunities

The Opportunities DataGrid can found in the main menu on the left of your platform.

This DataGrid contains every Opportunity added within your accessplanit platform, including Opportunities that have been added by an administrator, and Opportunities added via the Enquiry Form plugin on your website.

You can switch to your own Opportunities Kanban board to view the Opps that are specifically assigned to you only, by clicking on the ‘Switch to Board’ toggle button at the top of the Opportunities DataGrid page.


Opportunities Best Practice 

Here are some top tips to allow you to get the most out of Opportunities within your accessplanit platform! 

  1. Here at accessplanit we strongly recommend that you take some time to map out the stages of your Sales pipeline, then create Sales Stages to reflect them

    Sales Stages are used to indicate the status of each Opportunities, this can be invaluable if a member of your team is unexpectantly absent, Sales Stages are also very useful for reporting on your current pipeline, and can support you team with prioritising which Opportunities to focus on.

    To add your own Sales Stages go to the Custom List Items page. You can return to this page to add more or edit your existing Sales Stages at any point!

    Here are some common Sales Stages:

    1. New Opportunity

    2. Qualifying

    3. Contacted

    4. Closed

    5. Preferred

    6. Won

    7. Lost - Costs

    8. Lost - No Reply

    9. Lost - Location

  2. As Opportunities allow you to track and manage your past and current enquiries transparently across your team; once you have established your Sales Stages, create some useful filters and share these with your team to allow them to find the information they want quickly, to save time and be more productive!


    Here are some example filters that you could create and share:

    1. Assigned to me - only Opportunities that you are assigned to

    2. Unassigned - only see Opportunities that do not yet have anyone assigned to them

    3. Probability % - only see Opportunities that are above or below a certain probability



  3. Automatically add Opportunities when a potential customer fills in an enquiry form on your website

    Whether you already have an enquiry form on your website or not, it is worth considering adding your accessplanit’s enquiry form plugin to your webpages.

    When a user completes their enquiry form, an Opportunity is automatically created for them in your Opportunities DataGrid. This saves countless admin hours (and no one enjoys spending hours copying and pasting enquiry information!), and reduces the chance of human error.

    You can read more about the enquiry form plugin here.


  4. Create Opportunity based Custom Fields to map your accessplanit platform to your sales processes and ensure you're capturing all the information that you need!


  5. Automate your communications to your customers & alerts to your team

    A major benefit of using Opportunities is being able to automate communications to your prospective customers, and your team, at each of your Sales Stages!

    From the initial ‘thank you for your enquiry’, through to ‘thank you for your custom’, you have control over the content of your emails, when they send and who they send to.

    Here are some example Workflows based on updates to Opportunities:

Workflow

Settings

Sending to

New opportunity raised

n/a

Administrators, 5 minutes after the Opp is created

Thank you for your enquiry

n/a

Enquirer email address, 5 minutes after the Opp is created

Course specific information & whitepapers

Opp is still open

Enquirer email address, 3 days after the Opp is created

Quotation

Sales stage changed to ‘Qualified’

Enquirer email address, 5 minutes after the sale stage change

Opportunity due to close

Opp is still open

Administrators, 2 days before Opp expected close date

No movement on Opp

Opp is still open

Administrators, 7 days after last update

Thank you for choosing us

Sales stage changed to ‘Closed Won’

Enquirer email address, 5 minutes after the sale stage change

Thank you for considering us

Sales stage changed to ‘Closed Lost’

Enquirer email address, 5 minutes after the sale stage change



FAQs

  1. Can I change the columns in my Opportunities Kanban Board
    Yes - you can drag & drop the Opportunities columns to re-order the Sales Stages, and if you want to add more Sales Stage options, you can do this via Custom List Items. For more information, please see out helpguide articles listed below:
    Custom List Items Overview
    How To: Custom List Items

  2. Can I bulk update my old Opportunities to Closed?
    Yes there is a bulk option in the Opportunities DataGrid which you can use to set many of your Opportunities to a 'Closed' Sales Stage in one action.

  3. Can I add Products & Services into my Opportunities?
    Not yet! Please log your interest for this feature

  4. Can I override the costs on Opportunities for different customers?
    Yes - you can define the costs on each Opportunity Item that you add to your Opportunities, this cost will automatically pull through into your shopping basket when it is booked!

  5. Can I delete Sales Stages that I am no longer using?
    Yes! However you can only delete Sales Stages that are not currently in use, so first you will need to Edit or Bulk Edit any Opportunities that have that Sales Stage to have a different one. You can then delete the Sales Stage from Custom List Items.



Further Reading

The sales process: Training provider best practice

Why You Should Map Your Customer Journey