Currently in our Sales process, we are re-opening closed lost opportunities no matter the reason or the length of time in between the close a re-open. I had a conversation with a rep at a analytics company that suggested we no longer do this, instead creating new opportunties to maintain historical reporting. I agree with this statement, particularly in the scope of looking at Marketing metrics like close ratios for a given year, current solution, opportunity competitors, etc.
Our Sales VP thinks that we should continue the way that we are going, re-opening old opportunities. The reason behind this is she wants to be able to see all activities on one screen for clients that are excessively large and will have multiple opportunities (for example, hotel groups with a number of opportunities for additional properties).
What do you guys think? Do you know of any way to meet in the middle?
8 Antworten
I'm not a fan of re-opening closed opportunities. As others have said, once closed then it should remain closed from a historical metrics standpoint.
I view opportunities as a single attempt to make a sale. If the customer is not interested or not able to move forward at this time then that opportunity is closed lost and the sales rep can create themselves a future task to follow up at X time. It also skews forecasting to always be moving out an opportunity and restarting your sales cycle.
When following up with the prospective customer then the sales rep can clone the original opportunity and tweak as necessary for this new venture. For example, if this go around they are pitching Solution C instead of Solution B. You also preserve the owner of the opportunity "then" and "now".
From the VP of Sales perspective wanting to see all activities going on with the account, the good thing is that all activities on contacts and opportunities are shown in the activities related list on the related account. Perhaps training the users to look there to get a larger picture of activities going on with the account could be helpful?
If there is a real need to know the evolution of the opportunities, I would consider adding a custom field for parent opportunity (or related opportunity) that looks up to another opportunity record. In this way sales reps can link the new opportunity back to the original opportunity to know the evolution chain.
Good luck!
