Define Opportunity Stages in Salesforce.com (How to Design & Train Users on Opportunity Stages)

• How should I name my Opportunities in Salesforce.com
• How shall I decide which Opportunity stage is relevant

Every Organization has one or more Sales Teams, and every Sales Team has a Sales Processes to follow. Every Sales Processes then is defined with a set of Opportunity Stages each having an Entry and Exit point. 

Over the years, having implemented numerous Sales Cloud projects, I have learnt that Opportunity stages without Exit and Entry points defined can be very confusing and users end up selecting a stage going by their intuition and gut feel which at times is right but for a considerable amount of times it is not. Undefined Stages leads to multiple perceptions and influences the user behavior. Thus, reflecting in Reports & dashboard and impacting Forecasting too.

To quote an example:  If a user sees Opportunity stages like - 

• Open, Considered, Qualified, Demo (OR)
• Order Process Started, Order Probably coming, Order being Processed, Order Processed 

it becomes highly confusing for a User to pick one when on the field unless clear entry and exit points are defined for each.

Let me outline a small  Entry and Exit excercise for each Opportunity Stage which I would highly recommend for every organization to map themselves against and share the same standardized process down the line with all the Sales Teams.

OPPORTUNITY NAMING CONVENTION

Organizations should follow a standard naming convention for ease of recognition and data consistency. Below is a widely used example:

1. Short version of the Account name (10 characters or less)

2. Brief description of what the Opportunity is for (10 characters or less)

3. Date you created the Opportunity (DD.MM.YYYY)

                             Example: ABSYZ INC- PRODUCTABC - 02.02.2014

OPPORTUNITY  STAGE ENTRY & EXIT POINTS

 The stages above are self explanatory, the notes within each will help you define the Entry and Exit points for your Opportunity Processes.