Can you help me understand the difference between opportunities and orders? We need to track our sales efforts (getting into a new grocery store) and then orders for current customers.
Are you adding products to opportunities as well as to orders? Do you create a new opportunity if the store wants to start carrying a new flavor?
3 Antworten
Hi Kurt - I like to explain opportunities as a distinct chance to do or establish business with someone. Ex: Sell a product, start a new contract, renew an existing contract, get a donation, etc.
Opportunities represent the sales process and help track the selling effort, wins/losses, pipeline, etc.
Orders are meant more for business that is closed-won. If I sold bricks and I closed-won an opp with a new contractor, I set up a contract. That contract would specify how many pallets of bricks he should get at which intervals. So in this case, the contract is for a pallet of bricks 2x a month. If they change that to 3x a month or 2 pallets, 2x a month, I don't think that is a new opportunity, its just a change to existing contract/order.
Similar to how in the consulting world, an opportunity is an Statement of Work, modifications are change orders to that SOW.
This is different based on your business though, your performance indicators, what you measure, a bunch of other things. For your use case, if they want to start carrying a new flavor (or you want them to), do you have to go through the sales and contract cycle again? Is it possible you try to get them to carry more and they say no (thats a loss, so you may want to track losses via opportunity) or is simply, oh yeah, we'll throw the Diet Pepsi on with the regular Pepsi next week?
Think about what is important for measuring sales performance, forecasting, and what managers want to see and it should help guide your decision making.
Hope this is helpful!
