CRM: from lead to won deal

The CRM app organises commercial activity: it records incoming contacts, tracks open deals in a visual pipeline, plans follow-up actions and measures the team's performance.

Configuring the CRM

Enabling the features you need

1. Open CRM › Configuration › Settings.
2. Enable the options that match your organisation: - Leads: separates raw, unqualified contacts from actual deals. Without this option, everything lands straight in the pipeline as an opportunity. - Lead Enrichment: automatically completes company information from the professional email address. - Recurring Revenues: tracks a recurring revenue alongside the one-off amount of the deal.

The Predictive Lead Scoring block sits in the same place, but it has no checkbox: scoring is always on. The block is there to review the criteria used and to re-run the computation (see chapter 8). 1. Save.

Defining the pipeline stages

Stages represent how far a deal has progressed through your sales cycle.

1. Open CRM › Configuration › Pipeline › Stages.
2. Click New to add a stage, or open an existing stage to edit it.
3. Fill in: - Stage Name: the label shown at the top of the column in the pipeline; - Sequence: the display order, from lowest to highest; - Is Won Stage?: tick this on the stage that marks the deal as closed; - Folded by default: hides the column when it is empty; - Sales Teams: reserves the stage for the teams named, if cycles differ from one team to another. Left empty, the stage is visible to every team; - Days to rot: the number of days without an update beyond which a deal in this stage is flagged in the pipeline. The value 0 turns the flag off; - Requirements: describes the conditions to be met to reach the stage. This text appears in the pipeline when hovering over the column title.

Organising the sales teams

1. Open CRM › Configuration › Sales Teams.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in the team name, the Team Leader and the Email Alias if the team is to receive requests by email.
4. In the Members tab, add the salespeople concerned.
5. Save.

Recording and qualifying a lead

Creating a lead

1. Open CRM › Leads.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in: - the subject of the request in the main field; - the Contact concerned: pick it among the existing contacts, or create it from the field; - the Email and the Phone; - the Salesperson responsible; - the Tags that will let you find the lead by topic.
4. Open the Extra Info tab: the Ownership block carries the Sales Team, and the Marketing block the Source and the Campaign, which let you later measure where deals come from.
5. Describe the need in the Notes tab.
6. Save.

Converting a lead into an opportunity

Once the lead is qualified (the need is real, the contact is the right one, the budget exists) it becomes an opportunity and joins the pipeline.

1. Open the lead.
2. Check the Contact, the Salesperson and, in the Extra Info tab, the Sales Team.
3. Click Convert to Opportunity.

The conversion is immediate: no intermediate window opens. The record takes the shape of an opportunity, joins the pipeline and displays the stage, the expected revenue and the probability. If the contact is not attached to a customer yet, Odoo matches the lead against the existing contacts and creates the customer record when nothing matches.

Merging duplicates

When the same customer approaches you through several channels, several leads or opportunities describe the same deal. Merging brings them together into a single record, which keeps the information and the history of each.

1. Open CRM › Leads or the pipeline, and switch to list view.
2. Tick the records to bring together.
3. Click Actions then Merge Leads/Opportunities.
4. Check the list offered and, if needed, fill in the salesperson and the team to keep.
5. Click Merge.

Moving an opportunity forward

The pipeline

Open CRM › Sales › My Pipeline. Deals appear as cards, spread across columns corresponding to the stages.

• Drag a card to the next column to move the deal forward.
• Click a card to open the deal and complete its information.
• Use the colour dots and the tags to spot priorities at a glance.

As soon as the database holds several sales teams, a team selector appears at the head of the pipeline, in place of the screen title. It restricts the display to one team: the deals of that team and those attached to none, with only the stages that concern it. The team selected also becomes the team of the deals created from that screen. The choice is kept from one session to the next.

Filling in the steering information

On every opportunity, keep the following up to date:

• Expected Revenue: the amount of the deal;
• Probability: the chances of closing, as a percentage;
• Expected Closing: the date by which the decision is expected.

Planning the next action

An activity is an action to be carried out, dated and assigned to someone, attached to a document. It is Odoo's internal follow-up mechanism, shared by every app; how it works in general is described in section 4.2.

1. Open the opportunity.
2. In the chatter, at the bottom of the form, click Activity.
3. Choose the type among the tiles offered: call, meeting, email, to-do. This field has no label.
4. Fill in the lines offered. They carry no label either: each one has an icon and a placeholder. In order: the summary, the number to call if it is a call activity, the deadline, the person in charge of the action, the role in charge of the action and a note.
5. Click Save.

Once the action is done, click Mark Done and immediately plan the next one.

Tracking the activity workload

From the pipeline, switch to the Activity view using the view icons at the top right. The screen is laid out as a table: one row per opportunity, one column per activity type, each header carrying the count of activities of that type. Clicking a cell lets you plan or review the corresponding activity.

The colour dots indicate urgency: overdue activities appear in red, today's in orange, later ones in green. This colour code is the same throughout the database, including on the clock icon in the top bar that gathers your activities across all apps (see section 4.2).

Closing the deal

Drawing up the quotation

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click New Quotation.
3. The quotation opens, pre-filled with the customer, the salesperson and a reference to the opportunity.
4. Complete the product lines, the payment terms and the expiration date.
5. Save, then send the quotation to the customer (see chapter 11).

The quotation stays attached to the opportunity: the Quotations smart button, at the top of the form, shows how many proposals have been sent and their amount. Smart buttons give access to the documents linked to the one you are looking at (see section 3.4.2).

Marking the deal as won

1. Open the opportunity, or drag it to the stage marked as won.
2. Click Won.

Recording a lost deal

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click Lost.
3. Select a Lost Reason among the tiles offered and, if useful, fill in the Closing Note.
4. Click Mark Lost.

The opportunity is archived but remains available: it feeds the analysis of lost reasons. To reopen it, display it through the Lost filter, then click Restore, at the top of the form.

Analysing sales activity

The pipeline report

1. Open CRM › Reporting › Pipeline.
2. Choose the view that suits the question: graph for a trend, pivot table for figures, list for detail.
3. Use Filters and Group By to cross period, team, salesperson, stage or lost reason.

The forecast

Open CRM › Reporting › Forecast to project the expected revenue by month, based on the expected closing dates and the probabilities entered.

Good practice