User Guide for Deal Management

The deal management process is a series of actions you must perform to handle a deal till its conclusion effectively. In a sales process, you create deals when you sales-qualify your leads. 

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

• Initiation and planning
• Operations and tracking
• Closing
• Post-deal operations

Initiation and Planning

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

Pipelines and Stages

A sales pipeline depicts a deal's step-by-step process, from initiation to closure. So, is a single pipeline enough to manage all your deals?  You should create different pipelines when you serve different types of businesses - small, medium, or large- or sell different products or services. 

Forecast and Quotas

The Forecast and Quota feature allows you to 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.

Comments

Comments are a form of text communication, using which you can have discussions and leave notes. Sales teams can always return to a conversation in the comments and get insights into a deal.

Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are a variant of comments. You can highlight essential information, such as guidelines and warnings, 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 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 multiple contacts collaborate on a deal, you can define contact roles from them. Contact roles help you identify the key stakeholders of a deal and each contact's role. 

Progress Tracking

You must ensure they are progressing in the right direction for ongoing deals. 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. 
• 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.

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.
• Calculus: Calculus is an AI-powered tool that analyzes email and phone conversations that customer-facing teams have with customers. After the analysis, it generates reviews, ratings, and other suggestions to improve the conversations’ quality. 

Collaborating with Customers

You may need to speak to your leads multiple times during the deal management. Whether 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 service provider to set up incoming and outgoing calls. Vtiger CRM collaborates with 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.

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 should revise the quote multiple times. 
• 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.

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. 
• Esign: 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 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.