Introduction

The deal management process is a series of actions you must perform to handle a deal till its conclusion effectively. A deal is a sales opportunity that you pursue with a person or a business. In a sales process, you create deals when you sales-qualify your leads. To learn about the sales process in Vtiger CRM in detail, click here.

Vtiger CRM’s deal management process involves plenty of elements, starting from designing sales pipelines to invoicing a deal. We have broadly categorized the process into the following four steps:

1. Initiation and planning
2. Operations and tracking
3. Closing
4. Post-deal operations

Let us find out what tools Vtiger CRM offers at each stage of the process.

Initiation and Planning

The initial stage of deal management is when you are pursuing a sales-qualified lead. It involves creating a sales pipeline, sales forecasting, and setting up team quotas. During the process, you may also need to collaborate with your teammates to achieve sales results. Below are the features that Vtiger CRM provides for the same. 

• Pipelines and stages: A sales pipeline depicts the step-by-step process a deal progresses through, from initiation to closure. So, is a single pipeline enough to manage all your deals?  When you serve different types of businesses - small, medium, or large, or sell different kinds of products or services, you might need to create different pipelines. Vtiger CRM allows you to add multiple sales pipelines and sales stages customized to your needs. When you have your pipelines in place, managing deals becomes easy.  
• Forecast and quotas: The Forecast and Quota feature is where you can set sales goals for your sales team. As a sales manager, you can specify a quota for yourself, your team, and individual team members. Moreover, you have options to set quotas on a monthly and quarterly basis.
• Internal (team) collaboration: During the planning stage, you must make sure that all your team members are on the same page. You can do this using the tools listed below. 
  • Comments - Comments are a form of text communication, using which you can have discussions and leave notes. Sales teams can always go back to a conversation in the comments and get insights into a deal.
  • Sticky notes - Sticky notes are a variant of comments. When there is an essential piece of information such as guidelines and warnings, you can highlight it by converting a comment into a sticky note.    
  • Events - To meet your teammates for a discussion, you can create an event and invite them. Events can be of type call, meeting, etc. You can also create Google Meet events where a meeting link is automatically generated and added to the invitation.

Operations and Tracking

While planning and settings up goals, you will simultaneously create and manage deals. Let us see how.

Creating deals 

Deal records in Vtiger CRM help you manage your sales deals. It offers you important details such as a deal’s amount, pipeline, and expected close date. It also gives you the information below.

• One View: A deal’s related contacts, organizations, tasks, events, etc., are shown under One View. It is convenient as it gives you a birds-eye view of all your deal-related information on a single screen. 
• Contact roles: When you have multiple contacts collaborating on a deal, you can define contact roles from them. Contact roles help you identify the key stakeholders of a deal and the role that each contact plays. 

Progress tracking

For ongoing deals, you must ensure they are progressing in the right direction. As a sales manager, you can track the progress of a deal in several ways.

• Journey Templates: A journey template gives the sequence of tasks a sales representative must perform to close a deal. Journey templates are automatically generated when you create sales pipelines. All you must do is add journey tasks based on your sales process. Journey tasks are shown on a deal record along with a progress bar. 

• Probability: When you set up a sales pipeline, you can assign a probability to each sales stage. Probability indicates the percentage progress of a deal. For example, if a deal’s probability is 70%,  the deal is 30% away from its closure. 

• Geo-tracking: This feature is significant in field sales and available on Vtiger CRM's mobile application. With geo-tracking, field sales representatives can locate nearby clients and plan the best route to reach them. They can also check in to and check out of client locations. Furthermore, sales managers can locate field sales reps using the app. 

You can also use the features below to monitor your sales team’s activities and progress.

• Sales Insights: Vtiger CRM automatically generates reports about funnel progression, a sales rep’s activities, closed deals, etc., as Sales Insights. The reports give you insights into a deal’s progress, your company's sales, and your sales team’s performance.

• Sales Leaderboard: As a sales manager, you can get details such as the leading performers’ names, win-loss ratio, top 10 deals closed, top products 10 sold, etc., from the Sales Leaderboard. This information gives you a perception of the top performers, most-popular products, and other details instantly. 

• Calculus: Calculus is an AI-powered tool that analyzes email and phone call conversations that customer-facing teams have with customers. After the analysis, it generates reviews, ratings, and other suggestions to improve the conversations’ quality. When sales teams have meaningful conversations with leads and customers, customer satisfaction increases, resulting in customer retention.

Collaborating with customers

You may need to speak to your leads at multiple instances during the deal management process. Be it in the initiation stage when you collect requirements or in the closing stage when you negotiate, Vtiger CRM’s collaboration tools help you have smooth conversations. 

• Appointment pages: Get a ready-made meeting schedule with Appointment Pages. An appointment page shows free slots from your work schedule. You can share the page with your customers and allow them to select a suitable slot to speak to you. 

• Google Meet: Vtiger reduces the effort you put into sending back-and-forth emails to schedule meetings by integrating with Google Meet. So, how does it work? It’s simple - create a Google Meet event on the CRM. It automatically adds a Google Meet link to the invitation. Customers can click the link to join the meeting with you.  

• Phone calls: With the Phone Calls module, you can choose a phone service provider to set up incoming and outgoing calls. Vtiger CRM collaborates with many telephone gateways such as Twilio, Plivo, Knowlarity, etc. You can set up a gateway and place a call in just a few clicks. 

• Documents: In the process of converting a deal, you may have to share documents with your customers. The Documents module is where you can effortlessly create quotes, invoices, sales orders, etc., and instantly share them with your customers. You can also pick from a lot of print templates to customize the design of your documents.

Closing 

The final stage of deal management starts when your lead is ready to buy your products or services. Now, what do you do during this stage? Usually, leads and salespeople negotiate, finalize, and invoice a deal. For this, Vtiger CRM provides the features listed below. 

• Quotes and invoices: You create a quote with taxes, discounts, payment terms, and other conditions specified. You might need to revise the quote multiple times. Finally, when the customer approves your quote, you invoice the deal. With print templates, you can customize the layout and design of your quotes and invoices. 

• Projects: After you have won a deal, you can create a project to monitor the execution of operations. This is possible with milestones and tasks. You can add multiple tasks under each project milestone, set reminders, and use the Gantt View to track progress. 

Post-Deal Operations

Post-deal or post-sale operations start after you have won a deal. During this stage, you dispatch your products to your customers or make them available for their use. 

• Sales orders and delivery notes: Depending on your business process, you generate a sales order when your customer approves. Furthermore, you create a delivery note when your products are ready to be delivered. You can also send a delivery note for an electronic signature or e-signing using Vtiger CRM’s Esign Documents. 
• Credit notes: If a customer returns or replaces a product that you delivered, you create a credit note. For instance, if the original product is of a higher value than the exchanged product, you create a credit note for the difference amount and credit it to your customer. 

Customers can raise concerns one or more times if they face a problem using your products or services. For such situations, you must offer them a ‘help desk’ to resolve their queries. This post-sale process is called customer service or help desk management in Vtiger CRM. To learn more about it, click here.