Opportunity Management Guide

Managing your sales pipeline

An opportunity represents a qualified sales deal. Unlike a lead, which is an unqualified prospect, an opportunity has been assessed and is worth active pursuit. Opportunities link to accounts, contacts, decision makers, service offerings, and estimated values.

• Linked to your customer data

  Every opportunity is connected to an account and a contact. You always know which organisation and person the deal relates to, and who the decision maker is.

• Service offerings attached

  Add one or more service offerings to each opportunity via a direct many-to-many relationship, there’s no separate linking record to create or maintain. This structures your pipeline reporting by service type and gives management meaningful visibility into what you’re selling.

• Estimated and actual value

  Track estimated revenue before close and actual revenue on win. Pipeline value reporting draws from these fields across all open opportunities.

• Win and loss tracking

  Every opportunity closes as Won or Lost, with the reason recorded. Over time this builds the foundation for pipeline analysis and sales process improvement.

Five stages from qualification to close

Dove365 CRM — Starter uses a five-stage business process flow for opportunities. Each stage has specific fields to complete before progressing, ensuring your team captures consistent, reliable data.

1. Qualify

   Confirm the opportunity is worth pursuing. Record account, contact, decision maker, estimated value, source, and priority.

2. Discovery

   Understand the customer’s need. Confirm budget and timeline. Record what you’ve learned about the business problem and what success looks like.

3. Proposal

   Document the proposed solution. Record proposed amount, win probability, proposal sent date, and any competitor context.

4. Negotiate

   Track final discussions. Note approval required, confirm close date, and keep opportunity status current as negotiations progress.

5. Close

   Mark the outcome as Won or Lost. Won: record actual revenue. Lost: record the reason. Closing updates reporting automatically.

Understanding your pipeline

Pipeline management is about maintaining an accurate, up-to-date view of all active deals so you can make informed decisions about priorities, resources, and revenue forecast.

Day-to-day opportunity management

• Converting from a leadThe most common way to create an opportunity is by converting a qualified lead. This automatically links the new opportunity to the account and contact created or linked during the lead conversion process, preserving the full engagement history.
• Adding service offeringsUse the related Service Offerings grid on the opportunity to attach the specific services relevant to the deal. This is a direct many-to-many relationship between Opportunity and Service Offering, so you simply add or remove services from the grid, no intermediate linking record is involved. This structures your pipeline by service type and gives your admin team the data needed for meaningful reporting on revenue mix.
• Logging activity throughout the dealUse the timeline to record calls, emails, and meetings as the opportunity progresses through each stage. Before presenting a proposal, review the timeline to confirm you haven’t missed any commitments or raised concerns.
• Closing an opportunity decisivelyAt stage 5, mark the outcome. Don’t leave opportunities open after the deal is decided. Closed opportunities that should be marked Won or Lost distort your active pipeline view and make your forecast unreliable.

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