When Would You Create an Opportunity?

The Opportunity Screen

We’d guess that approximately 99% of Dynamics users opt to customise the Opportunity screen. However, the basic Opportunity screen can still be used successfully until you identify any extra fields / columns that you need. It is a living record of your sales journey and the interactions you have had with customers.

Unfortunately, too many people think of this screen as a tool purely for post-sale administrative tasks (for management) and not as a pro-active sales tool for themselves. “When I first saw it, I thought of it more as an admin screen. But, now that I know how it works, this is no longer true.” – Luca Proietti, Sales Assistant at D365 Life Without Code.

How we have altered our screen

As you can see in the screenshot below, we have done a lot of work on our screen to help us get better metrics, without increasing the perceived admin time. We have also designed a form that works beautifully with a mobile device (which is great to have now we can go back out and see people again!).

From a metrics point of view, we can then enable the system to filter on all the opportunities that have to do with (for example) licenses.

The timeline can be very useful to help you keep track of things you may otherwise forget to do or have happened. It’s the small details that take your record to the next level. If your customer is moving office, you can create a task to update their address on the move date, and also potentially send them a welcome to your new office card. Let the system take care of remembering this rather than you. Our Sales Assistant Luca deals with many organisations at one time. The timeline offers him a snapshot of all the important details.

How we use The Opportunity Screen

The Opportunity screen, and the information that it holds, is incredible for generating discussion points. When presenting information, there is a clear line of information to take people through. At D365, we run our sales meetings using Dynamics as an agenda as it allows us to see data efficiently. It offers more than just seeing won and lost opportunities, however, by giving us business development opportunities. It is only because we have the data there that we can begin to analyse this.

The business process flow (sales process) can be viewed at various points of the system. We would recommend that, unless you have a very set flow of how you work, not to attempt to alter the business process flow. This is because it does not create / design your sales process; it should replicate how you work.

Remember, dynamics is a tool to support your business.

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