Create and Manage Stages and Sales Processes

Map Your Process to Opportunity Stages

Before you do anything in Salesforce to set up a new opportunity record type, work with your team to chart the lifecycle for this type of revenue and map each step to an opportunity stage.

Here are some questions to answer as a team.

• What is the step-by-step process, beginning when you identify an opportunity and continuing until it’s closed?
  
• At each step, what do you need to move an opportunity to the next stage?
  
• For each stage, how likely is an opportunity to close?
  

That last question helps you determine the probability of closing for each stage. For example, an opportunity in the Qualification stage has a 10% chance to close, but one where the client is reviewing a formal proposal has a 60% chance to close.

With each stage and probability mapped, take an inventory and compare your stages to the stages already in Salesforce. Try to minimize the number of stages and standardize stage names across your revenue streams to make it easier for your users to understand what each stage means.

NMH needs a way to track opportunities for its new staffing service. The NMH staff determined their opportunity stages and probabilities and gathered the information in a table. Check it out.

Create New Stages

NMH can mostly use existing stages, but needs to add one new value—Internal Review—to the Stage field on the Opportunity object.

Follow along and complete these steps in the Trailhead Playground you created for this project.

1. Click Setup () then Setup.
   
2. Click Object Manager.
   
3. Find and select Opportunity. It’s fastest to enter opportunity in the Quick Find field and filter the list.
   
   
4. Click Fields & Relationships in the object settings menu.
   
5. Find and select Stage. Again, it’s fastest to use the Quick Find field.
   
6. In the Opportunity Stages Picklist Values related list, take a moment to notice that all of the stage values for every different opportunity record type are included in this list, then click New.
   
   
7. Enter these details:
   

• Stage Name: Internal Review
  
• Type: Open. This choice means that opportunities in this stage are classified as still in progress, and aren't closed won or lost.
  
• Probability: 30
  
• Forecast Category: Pipeline. This choice adds opportunities in this stage to pipeline reports for revenue forecasting, with a value based on the probability.
  
• Description: Review opportunity with program team and create a staffing plan to ensure we can meet the needs of program participants and customers.
  
• Don’t select any of the existing Sales Processes yet. You create your Sales Process next.
  

8. Click Save.
   

Now that your new stage is created, you need to make sure that it—and other stages—appear in the correct order on your new opportunity record type.

1. On the Opportunity object record in Object Manager, click Reorder on the Opportunity Stages Picklist Values related list.
   
   
2. Select your new Internal Review stage and move it after the Qualification stage by clicking the Up () and Down () buttons.
   
   
3. Click Save.
   

Create a New Sales Process

With the new stage in place, create a sales process. Remember, a sales process is a filtered list of opportunity stages. Because all of the other opportunity record types in NPSP are focused on philanthropic gifts, you need to create a new, more sales-oriented process.

1. In Setup, click the Home tab.
   
2. Find and select Sales Processes. Remember to use Quick Find as the fastest route.
   
   
3. Notice that there are sales processes for several other opportunity record types, then click New.
   
4. Enter these details.
   

• Existing Sales Process: –Master–. This choice includes every stage in the sales process by default. You can remove what you don’t need.
  
• Sales Process Name: Staffing Services
  
• Description: Sales process for working with businesses for NMH staffing services.
  

5. Click Save.
   
6. All active Stage values appear in Selected Values. To remove the values you don’t need, click each and then click Remove (). Leave only these values, in this order:
   

• Prospecting - 10%
  
• Closed Lost - 0%
  
• Closed Won - 100%
  
• Qualification - 10%
  
• Internal Review - 30%
  
• Proposal/Review - 60%
  
• Verbal Commitment - 80%
  
  

7. Click Save.
   

The new stage and sales process are in place, and now there are a few more things you need to do before you’re ready to create and test your new opportunity record type: create a field and a page layout for the Opportunity object.

You do that in the next step, but first be sure to click Verify here to check your work from this step.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Create Opportunity Stages and Sales Processes