What Is An Opportunity In Salesforce?

Handling customers is never an easy task for a business. Right from reaching out to the prospects and encouraging them to engage with the business to making a sale and following up with the same, CRM activities can get really tedious and complicated.

This is where CRM platforms like Salesforce jump in as saviors, helping businesses pertaining to all scales and industries in handling their customer database in an automated, effective, and faster manner.

Salesforce allows you to keep a thorough record of the smallest details pertaining to your active, potential, and past customers. You can choose from multiple editions and platforms based on Salesforce pricing and the needs of your organization.

Salesforce helps you in handling the entire journey of your customers – from acquisition to final follow-up. During this journey, Salesforce objects play an important role in tending to your customers and keeping a track of every deal you strike.

What Is A Salesforce Object?

Salesforce objects are nothing but tablets of information that store data pertaining to a specific aspect of your database. Every Salesforce object has a record of information pertaining to a fixed group of people, businesses, or activities performed by your team.

There are two major types of Salesforce objects – standard objects and custom objects. Standard Salesforce objects are already built within your Salesforce instance as you get it implemented.

On the other hand, custom objects can be created by users based on their specific needs for being added to their database. Some of the common standard Salesforce objects include leads, contacts, cases, accounts, opportunities, and many more. Here, we are going to discuss opportunities in Salesforce in detail.

So, what is a Salesforce opportunity?

What Is A Salesforce Opportunity?

In simple words, a Salesforce opportunity refers to a deal that is still ongoing. This often refers to the stage where a prospect is approached and they have shown interest in engaging with your business. However, they are yet to fully engage with you and the deal is not yet closed.

This is precisely why this Salesforce object is called “opportunity”. It contains all the deals that provide you with the opportunity of earning a customer/client which can go either way.

There is always an element of uncertainty when it comes to Salesforce opportunity, which makes it important for a user to manage the object regularly and precisely.

By monitoring your opportunities, you can keep a track of all your deals that are ongoing and take necessary steps to ensure that the maximum amount of deals close successfully.

The Importance Of Salesforce Opportunities

Salesforce opportunities provide you with all necessary details about an active deal at one place, including the estimated closing date, name of the potential customer, date of acquisition, activities performed, amount to be paid, and many more.

Also, Salesforce allows you to highlight specific changes in your opportunities to let your team members know about the same. You can make use of different colors and arrows in the opportunities list view to denote changes in the amount, estimated date of closing, and other important details.

Tips For Handling Salesforce Opportunities

A Salesforce opportunity is an important stepping stone that leads you to a client and helps you convert a prospect into a customer. It is important for every user to do their best to utilize every opportunity and prepare for closing more deals.

Here are some of the most basic tips to keep in mind as you move closer towards making your proposal to the prospect and going ahead with your deal:

1. Add products to your catalog for reference

2. Add contracts, datasheets, and other relevant documents

3. Log all the calls you make pertaining to a specific opportunity to keep a track of the same

4. Use the feature of Notes to keep a note of everything important said and heard during a client meeting

5. Create different tasks for yourself and your team for servicing the prospects and getting them to close a deal

6. Create calendar events for making your work more organized

7. Send emails to your prospects (or the person capable of closing your deals) for all the opportunities generated

8. Keep a track of all the emails and follow-ups sent and the responses received

How To Create A Salesforce Opportunity?

You can create a Salesforce opportunity by following these simple steps:

1. Log into your Salesforce account

2. Go to the Opportunity tab and click on “opportunities”

3. Enter the necessary fields, including the name of the opportunity, close date, stage, and other relevant fields

4. Click on Save to save the details

5. You will now be directed to a different page to review the opportunity you created

6. Review the opportunity you created and edit the same if you feel the need to do so

Important Considerations For Creating And Updating Salesforce Opportunities

Here are some of the most important aspects a user should consider while creating or updating a Salesforce opportunity:

Contact and Contact Roles

It is important for a user to have Read access to the concerned Salesforce account or contact for relating an opportunity to the same.

Divisions

If a Salesforce Admin has enabled divisions, the division of a Salesforce opportunity is set to the division of the related account.

Forecasts

In all Salesforce editions (except Salesforce Essentials), the opportunities that you create are given a forecast category corresponding to the opportunity stage defined by you while creating it.

If an opportunity is supposed to close in a specific period as mentioned by you in the Close Date field, the opportunity is added to the forecast of that period.

Editing On Mobile

If you are using the Salesforce mobile app, you are allowed to edit only one opportunity at a time.

Multiple Currencies

If a Salesforce Admin has enabled the option of multiple currencies, the users will be able to see the opportunity amounts initially in their personal currency.

Territory Management

If your Salesforce Admin has enabled the feature of original territory management, the opportunities you create are automatically assigned to a territory where the following conditions are met:

1. You belong to the same territory as the account on the opportunity or have edit privileges on the same.

2. You have no other territories in common with the account on the opportunity.

Considerations For Sharing A Salesforce Opportunity

If you are sharing a Salesforce opportunity, you are allowing one or more users to have a look into your sales pipeline and access to the concerned opportunity.

You can share an opportunity if you feel a specific user(s) is helpful for closing the concerned deal.

Here are a few important aspects to consider while sharing an opportunity:

The Sharing Model

Always remember that your Salesforce Admin holds the power to determine the default access levels across your Salesforce org (including the opportunity access levels for territories).

Access Limitations

You can always increase the access you provide to users to the opportunities created by you. However, you cannot restrict access beyond the limit set by your Salesforce Admin.

Sharing Details Page

The Sharing Details page contains the list of users, roles, groups, and territories having access to the concerned Salesforce opportunity.

Considerations For Cloning Salesforce Opportunities

Here are a few major considerations to keep in mind if you are willing to clone Salesforce opportunities for having different users work on the same:

Restricted Fields

If a specific record in the opportunity you are willing to clone has a field you do not have access to, the field in the cloned record will be blank.

Fields With Read-only Access

If the record you are willing to clone contains a field to which you have read-only access, the field in the record of the clone will be blank.

However, if you have read-only access to a related record of the opportunity, the record of the clone will have the original field value.

Custom Fields With Unique Values

If a related record in the opportunity contains a custom field that is configured to contain a unique value, you will need to delete the value before you clone the opportunity.

Related Records Limit

Always make sure that the total of the related contact role, product, and product schedule records should not cross 999.

Validation Rules, Apex Triggers, and Workflow

All related records in an opportunity are clones in batches of not more than 200. The validation rules, Apex triggers, and workflow are applied separately to every batch when an opportunity is cloned.

For example, if you are planning to clone an opportunity having 500 related records, the process occurs in three different batches with the above-mentioned rules being applied to every batch.

Salesforce opportunities are the indicators of the chances you stand of converting your prospects and closing your deals. Ultimately, it is in the hands of your sales reps to service every opportunity well and get the prospects to engage with your business to get the desired results.