What is an opportunity?

Every business generates leads. However, leads don't bring in revenue, deals do. You generate leads, nurture them, and convert them when they show an interest in purchasing your products or service.

The crucial stage between identifying a lead and closing or losing a deal is your "opportunity". You get to introduce your product and get your prospect to make a purchase. Your sales team likely puts a substantial amount of effort in interacting with the right people, involving stakeholders, making presentations, and showcasing demos to help them make that purchasing decision.

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Why do you need an opportunity management tool?

Opportunities are precious to your business, and they can boost your bottom line easily if handled the right way. You need to ensure you are managing your opportunities effectively, and that your teams are equipped with the right set of tools to get the most out of every single one of them.

Prioritize

A good opportunity management tool will help you prioritize your opportunities and focus on the best ones, using data driven predictions.

Track goals and progress

Understand the history of a specific opportunity, and the next steps you need to take to win it.

Complete picture

Get a 360-degree view of everything related to a particular opportunity. See every interaction, activity, and stakeholder involved to make informed decisions.

Optimize your process

Standardize your process, and ensure everyone understands what needs to be done to push your opportunities forward.

Boost productivity

Using collaborative functionalities, help your team operate more efficiently and streamline their sales process.

Why should businesses use a CRM for managing their opportunities?

A CRM is an indispensable tool for a modern sales team looking to build long-lasting customer relationships. Most CRMs come with the ability to plan and manage your opportunities, helping you effectively manage your sales opportunities, and provide your team with the necessary context and information to convert these opportunities into revenue.

BENEFITS OF USING A CRM SYSTEM

 

Increased
Automation

 

All information in
one place

 

Clear Operational
Strategy

 

Cost-Cutting

 

More time to sell

 

Mobile workforce

 

Data-driven
business culture

 

Uncomplicated
sales process

 

Contextual
communication

 

Effortless
Team Collaboration

 

End-to-end customer
engagement

 

SLA compliance

With
Zoho CRM
you get
41%

Revenue increase
per salesperson.

27%

Improvement in
customer retention.

24%

Decreased
sales cycles

23%

Decreased sales and
marketing costs.

Key features of an
opportunity management software

360° view
360° view AI Collaterals Competitors Quotes Collaboration Analytics Mobile CRM

A holistic view of all your deals

Your deals in CRM are the sales opportunities you've opened up by qualifying your prospects. It becomes easier for you to track key deals when you can see all your important information at a glance. Track how much of your expected revenue is near closure and which deals require your immediate attention. Use advanced filters to find opportunities with specific criteria, and take the necessary actions to push them further along in the pipeline.

Manage your deals with opportunity management in Zoho CRM

AI suggestions help you prioritize your deals

There are usually many opportunities in your pipeline at any given time, making it hard to focus on the right ones. Zia, Zoho CRM's AI sales assistant, makes it easier to choose the right ones to follow up with. Zia can also provide you with crucial information associated with a deal using simple voice commands. Even when you're on the move, you can talk to Zia to get contextual information that could make or break a deal.

Prioritize your sales opportunities with Zoho CRM's opportunity management solution

Centralized documents to maintain important sales collateral

Zoho CRM offers a centralized storage for all your sales collateral. Your sales team can contribute and maintain these documents, allowing anyone easy access as and when they need it.

Easy access to sales collaterals with opportunity management in Zoho CRM

Keep tabs on your competition

When you start pitching your solutions to a prospect, you are usually competing against other businesses. So, when your prospects mention a competitor during your conversations, make a note, and research their strengths and weaknesses to refine your pitch.

Track mentions of your competitors with Zoho's opportunity management CRM

Send quotes from within Zoho CRM

Sending quotes to your customers is an important step towards closing a deal. Streamline your process by sending quotes to your customers directly inside Zoho CRM. Personalize your quotes and include the most relevant product information, such as price and quantity, as well as customer data for easy record-keeping and organization.

Send and manage quotes from inside with opportunity management system of Zoho CRM

Collaborate effectively and sell better

Modern sales is a complex process that involves different teams and stakeholders. You need to collaborate effectively with your peers and different teams to refine your pitches and close deals effectively. Use built-in feeds and integrations with different live chat systems to coordinate your sales activities, share progress, and celebrate your wins.

An opportunity management system that fosters collaboration between users to close deals

Reporting and analytics

An analytics-driven business culture can go a long way toward transforming your organization's decision-making style from "gut feeling" to "data-driven." CRM software offers businesses the necessary intelligence to process data from different sources and churn out valuable insights to guide them with data. From basic charts to advanced analytics insights, such as spotting anomalies in your business, a built-in analytics engine in your CRM can help enterprises gain a crucial competitive advantage.

Optimize your opportunity management process with in-depth analytics

Mobile CRM

At a time when global mobile usage has overtaken desktops, it is vital that your CRM system allows your workforce to go completely mobile. A mobile CRM can help sales reps close more deals on the go. It allows managers to add and update data when they shuttle between business appointments, even when they are offline. At trade shows, business meetings, and networking events, mobile CRM apps help you be business-ready no matter where your business takes you.

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See how Zoho CRM can help you make the best of your sales opportunities

Zoho CRM has been a market leader for more than a decade. It's an online customer relationship management software for managing your sales, marketing, and support in a single system. Zoho CRM helps businesses of all sizes build excellent customer relationships, with features like a built-in AI sales assistant, sales pipeline management, marketing automation, analytics, and more.

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Opportunity management 101 : The basics of customer relationship management

What is opportunity management in crm?

Opportunity management is the process of tracking all opportunities for potential sales and converting them into recurring revenue. A CRM with opportunity tracking capabilities helps you prioritize opportunities using data driven predictions, track all of them in one place, and close them successfully by necessary context and provide your team with the necessary context and information to convert these opportunities into revenue.

Give an example of opportunity management process flow.

    Let's take an example of opportunity management in Car Dealership industry.

  • 1. Lead generation: Leads generated from online advertisements and test-drive events are captured and qualified in the CRM
  • 2. Lead qualification : Generated leads are qualified and scored based on their attributes
  • 3. Estimation and proposal : Final cost and discount are calculated and sent to the lead
  • 4. Close opportunity : Opportunity is closed as won/lost

What is sales opportunity management?

When it comes to sales, opportunity management is about converting potential prospects and leads into recurring revenue. Achieving this takes more than just a winning sales team. Sales Managers need to have a proper opportunity tracking system in place to keep track of their sales opportunity stages as they progress through the pipeline. A CRM with good sales opportunity management lets you track opportunities and turn them in to winning deals.

How to track opportunity in CRM?

The primary method of opportunity tracking in any CRM is through the Pipeline View. Every opportunity within a pipeline can be readily seen, in the stage in which it currently resides. The Kanban view in Zoho CRM shows all your records, arranged in specific categories. One quick glance at it, and you will be able to see how your pipeline looks and attend to the bottlenecks.

Why Zoho CRM is the best opportunity management tool?

Zoho CRM lets you track your sales pipeline from start to end - starting with identifying a hot prospect to prospecting them to winning the deal. In the pipeline view, you can spot the people likely to buy, and spend more time communicating with them. You can divide your sales cycle into stages, and prioritize the prospects that matter at every step. With advanced analytics, you can see your conversion rates, identify where the potentials churn the most, and measure the overall efficiency of your sales process.

How do I evaluate a CRM?

In order to make an investment toward a CRM, it is crucial for businesses to have a CRM evaluation method (or CRM metrics) in place. The prime concern of a CRM system is to improve relationships with customers and generate higher revenue. Therefore, it is necessary to identify if a prospective CRM is intended to track the efficiency of your sales and marketing teams, or to build a stronger relationship with your customers. Getting answers to questions like this will help determine your approach when acquiring a new CRM.