The ‘progress’ and ‘status’ of a sales opportunity are two different things. Both provide valuable information. It’s important to know that the progress of a deal is independent from its status. For example, a sales opportunity can have the status ‘proposal’ and also be ‘accepted’.
Progress
To properly track and monitor a sales opportunity in Simplicate, you can define each step you go through as progress. Commonly used stages of progress are:
Introduction – 10%
Presentation – 25%
Proposal – 50%
Negotiation – 75%
Won – 100%
Each phase can be assigned a probability percentage of success.
Status
A sales opportunity can have three different statuses. The 'Open' phase can be seen as the active working phase. The 'Scored' and 'Lost' statuses are particularly useful afterward for management information. Why did a deal go through or not, and what can we learn from that for the future?
Open
This is the phase in which the activities of the sales trajectory—such as introductions, submitting quotes, etc.—take place. This is where sales managers monitor and manage their deals.Example: the sales trajectory is in the ‘negotiation’ phase (75%). This means the likelihood of winning the deal is high, but it’s not yet certain.
Scored
The sales trajectory has been successfully completed. The deal is won!You can then see which progress phase the opportunity was in when the deal was closed. For example, a sales trajectory might still show the ‘proposal’ phase (50%) but be marked as ‘Scored’. This means that although the success chance was only 50%, the deal was still won!
Lost
The sales trajectory didn’t result in a deal and was lost. You can then see in which phase the client dropped out. For instance, during the ‘negotiation’ phase. It’s helpful to analyze what happened in that stage to improve future performance.
At any point during an active sales trajectory, the status can be changed to ‘Scored’ or ‘Lost’. The trajectory doesn’t necessarily have to be in the final progress phase ‘won’ (100%). The progress phase indicates the probability of winning the deal.
Maybe the presentation (25%) was so strong that the client immediately accepted, and the deal could be marked as ‘Scored’. Even though the chance was only 25%, the deal was still won. Great job!
The opposite is also possible. Even though negotiations were underway and the opportunity had a 75% chance of success, the deal still fell through. In that case, this data helps evaluate the sales process.