Sydney, NSW, Australia, October 15, 2013 -- The sales opportunity workflow in Maximizer is represented by the “opportunity pipeline”. From start to finish, all of the sales opportunities flow through this pipeline and at any time the Maximizer CRM user can see the status of each of the opportunities within the pipeline and monitor the progress. But in order to get the most from the opportunity pipeline in Maximizer, it needs to set it up so that it accurately reflects the real-world sales processes of each individual business.

Maximizer’s opportunity pipeline is divided into stages. The concept of the opportunity stages is to track and forecast the opportunities based off what is considered to be key milestone stages in the life of an opportunity for the business. There are no concrete rules for creating these stages as they are unique to the key sales milestones within each individual business. Each stage is associated with a percentage range that represents the probability that a sales person will close the sale. For example, in the initial stages of an opportunity, the salesperson might be unsure about actually closing the sale, so those stages would have a relatively low probability of closing. On the other hand, once an opportunity has advanced to the later negotiation stages, there might be more certainty of closing the sale, and so have a higher probability of closing. The probabilities of close for the opportunity stages must cover the entire range from 0% to 100% without any gaps.

For each new prospective sale a new opportunity should be created in Maximizer. It is important to ensure that the stage for the opportunity is kept up to date. Having accurate records of opportunities and current stages will allow managers to do accurate revenue forecasting for the opportunities in the pipeline using the opportunity pipeline report. It is worth mentioning that changing the stage of an opportunity only changes the probability of closing for the opportunity but doesn’t affect other aspects of the opportunity like the opportunity status. For example, having an opportunity stage with a highest range of 100 without automatically having the opportunity status set to “won” can only be manually done by a Maximizer user. Opportunities with a highest range of 100 will in fact stay in the pipeline and will show the weighted revenue the same as the forecasted revenue in the pipeline report.

At any time there is a snapshot of the opportunities in the pipeline, along with weighted revenue forecasts using the Opportunity Pipeline Report. The Pipeline Report shows a list of all of the opportunities, grouped by stage and account manager. It also calculates a weighted revenue forecast for each opportunity based on the projected revenue for the opportunity and the probability of closing for the opportunity. The formula the Pipeline Report uses to calculate the weighted revenue is weighted Revenue= Stage probability of closing upper limit divided by one hundred percent and then multiply the opportunity revenue. Note that the formula uses the highest percentage out of the range for the current stage of the opportunity when calculating the weighted revenue.

If the user has assigned a sales strategy to the opportunity, the probability of closing for that opportunity is calculated automatically based on the values for the success factors, roles, and steps that are part of the sales strategy. The opportunity’s stage, in turn, is then set automatically based on the calculated probability. When calculating the weighted revenue for an opportunity, the pipeline report takes into account the automatically calculated probability of closing if a sales strategy is applied to the opportunity. These factors are only considered in the calculation when sales strategies are in use.

Maximizer CRM:
Maximizer customer relationship management software (CRM) is a completely integrated sales, marketing, customer service and support management solution that enables Maximizer customers to manage attractive prospects, provide rich customer engagement, and fuel business’s success anywhere, anytime.

Whether an entrepreneur, small or medium business, or a large enterprise with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers, Maximizer CRM has the right solution for all businesses! Maximizer offers cloud CRM for mobile sales forces and on-premise CRM that can be managed on site and is available in 7 languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Turkish and French), in over 60 countries, serviced by 4 regional offices and more than 100 partners, with 120,000 customers and over 1 million licensed Maximizer CRM users, this software allows businesses all around the world to effectively manage sales leads and customer databases.

Contact:
Melanie Lawlor
Maximizer CRM
Level 10, 815 Pacific Highway
Chatswood, NSW 2067
02 9957 2011
[email protected]
http://www.maximizer.com.au/