A steady stream of sales opportunities is foundational for revenue growth. But properly managing those sales opportunities isn’t always easy.
All too often, sales reps waste precious time on the wrong leads. They also struggle to stay on top of all the sales opportunities in the pipeline, which leads to low conversion rates and inaccurate sales forecasts.
With a solid sales opportunity management strategy (and the right tools to support it), your sellers can focus on the right opportunities – and close more winnable deals.
But what exactly is sales opportunity management?
In this post, we’ll explore what sales opportunity management is and why it benefits revenue organizations. We’ll also share some best practices for more effective sales opportunity management at your organization.
What is sales opportunity management?
Let’s lay the foundation by defining what sales opportunity management is.
Sales opportunity management is identifying, organizing, and tracking sales opportunities in the sales pipeline in a structured and repeatable way. It involves proactively managing the entire lifecycle of a sales opportunity—from first contact to addressing sales objections to closing the deal. The ultimate goal of sales opportunity management is to convert more opportunities into closed deals.
But what is a sales opportunity?
Essentially, a sales opportunity is a prospect identified as a qualified lead. We’ll take a closer look at some types of sales opportunities later.
Sales lead vs sales opportunity: what’s the difference?
Sales lead, and sales opportunity are two phrases that are often used interchangeably. However, they are not the same thing.
A sales opportunity is a lead. But a lead isn’t necessarily a sales opportunity.
That’s because a sales opportunity is a qualified lead. And not all leads are qualified.
What makes a lead qualified? The exact criteria vary from organization to organization. But generally speaking, a qualified lead has a pain point that your products or services can address and has taken certain actions showing a willingness to buy.
Let’s use an example to clarify the distinction between sales leads and opportunities.
Let’s say your organization holds monthly webinars on topics relevant to your industry. You have a list of people who signed up for your most recent webinar. These are leads.
Some organizations would hand over all of the leads from the webinar to the sales team. But this isn’t an effective strategy. Sellers would be wasting their time because many aren’t qualified leads.
There are some webinar leads where you can identify sales opportunities. In addition to attending your webinar, these folks have been identified as a good fit for your products and services – and they may have engaged with your business in other ways, such as requesting a demo, engaging with email campaigns or marketing content, or interacting with a sales rep during a recent trade show. These are sales opportunities you can assign to your sales team.
What is the sales opportunity management process?
Now that we’ve defined sales opportunity management, what is the process?
Sales opportunity management looks different in different organizations. However, the process typically involves the following steps.
Lay the groundwork
Effective management doesn’t just happen. Instead, it requires the right foundation.
The first step of management involves establishing your processes and plans.
For starters, you must define the stages in the sales pipeline. You’ll also need to determine your criteria for qualifying leads and the process of assigning them to the appropriate sales rep.
You also need to ensure you have the right sales opportunity management tools. These include a CRM and a sales enablement platform, among others.
Identify sales opportunities
Once you have your processes established, you can start identifying sales opportunities. Sales opportunities can originate from several different sources, which we’ll explore in more detail later.
Remember: not all leads are sales opportunities. Establish criteria to determine which leads qualify as sales opportunities. This will help your sellers prioritize prospects who fit your products and services well.
Assign opportunities to the appropriate sales rep
Once you’ve identified a sales opportunity, it’s time to assign it to the appropriate sales rep. You can determine the right sales rep based on a number of different factors, including:
- Industry
- Size
- Geographic region
- Rep’s expertise
Execute and track sales opportunities
Once an opportunity has been assigned, it’s time for the rep to take action.
Sellers must have the right tools, resources, and content for proper sales execution. In addition, they must track the deal’s progression to keep things on track and ensure sales leadership always knows where every deal stands.
Analyze and optimize your strategy
It’s essential to measure your sales optimization efforts. That way, you can determine what’s working and what’s not. You can use these insights to optimize your opportunity management strategy.
What are the different types of sales opportunities?
In the world of B2B sales, there are several different types of sales opportunities, each of which must be approached differently.
Let’s look at some of the common types of B2B sales opportunities.
These are leads who have never purchased anything from your business before and may not know much about your company and your products and services.
These are often called expansion opportunities. They involve selling additional products or services—or higher-tier plans or packages—to existing customers.
These are current customers whose subscriptions or contracts are ending. Properly managing these sales opportunities can decrease churn and increase revenue.
These are prospects who are currently using a competitor’s solution but are dissatisfied and exploring other options. Sellers who can convey why their solution is a better choice can close these sales opportunities successfully.
This is an opportunity in which the prospect reaches out to you. For example, a lead may fill out a form to request a demo or attend a webinar hosted by your company. These sales opportunities have indicated their interest in your company, product, or solution.
Content
An outbound opportunity results from your sales team’s outreach. For example, an outbound sales opportunity can arise from cold calling or email campaigns.
This is an opportunity when someone refers a business to your company. Referrals can come from various sources, including current customers, past customers, partners, or industry influencers.
What are the benefits of sales opportunity management?
We know what sales opportunity management is. But why is it important for revenue organizations?
Proper lead and opportunity management enables sales teams to close more deals and drive revenue growth.
Let’s look at the many benefits of sales opportunity management.
Increased sales efficiency
Sellers spend a mere 30% of their time on selling activities in a given week. They must make the most of every minute.
Sellers spend just
With sales opportunity management, sellers can stop wasting their time on dead-end leads. That means they’ll have more time to spend with qualified sales opportunities.
Furthermore, because the details of each sales opportunity are easily accessible, sellers can quickly pick up where they left off. That means deals can stay on track – and close faster.
Improved marketing and sales alignment
Marketing teams are responsible for developing campaigns that generate leads. In some cases, those campaigns may generate a high volume of leads – but not many (or any) convert to customers.
With sales opportunity management, you have better insight into which leads convert – and which don’t. Then, marketing and sales teams can collaborate to create and optimize campaigns that yield more sales opportunities.
Better customer experiences
When sales opportunities are well managed, sellers have insights into a buyer’s needs, pain points, and preferences – right at their fingertips. Then, they can provide tailored guidance and experiences that meet the buyer’s expectations. When buyers’ expectations are met (and they feel the seller understands their needs), they’re more likely to convert.
Faster sales cycles
It can be challenging to keep a constant pulse on every deal in the sales pipeline. And all too often, deals stall.
With sales opportunity management, sellers don’t waste time refreshing their memory and deciding what to do next. Instead, they can access the status of each deal right away. That leads to less lag time – and shorter sales cycles.
More accurate forecasting
Accurately predicting revenue is important, but many organizations struggle with it. According to Gartner, less than half of sales leaders have high confidence in the accuracy of their sales forecasts.
With sales opportunity management, sales teams monitor the progress of each deal. This helps sales leaders predict when (and if) a deal will close.
More effective risk mitigation
In many cases, sales leaders don’t know a deal is going south until it’s too late..
With sales opportunity management, there’s more transparency into the pipeline. You can more easily spot problems and risks early on. Then, you can take appropriate action to get things back on track – and close more winnable deals.
Best practices for sales opportunity management
When done well, sales opportunity management can help your teams convert more leads to customers. But how can you ensure your opportunity management strategy runs on all cylinders?
There are eight best practices to consider.
#1 Align cross-functionally
Lead and opportunity management isn’t the sole responsibility of one individual or team.
Different teams have different roles. For example, marketing is responsible for developing campaigns that generate high-quality leads. Sales is responsible for engaging qualified leads, understanding their needs, and offering personalized solutions and experiences.
Sales enablement ensures sellers have the knowledge, skills, and resources to engage buyers throughout the sales cycle.
Sales opportunity management must be a collaborative effort. Be sure your key teams are aligned on goals and their role in achieving them.
#2 Use a standardized qualification process
It’s important to ensure your sellers are spending time with qualified leads – and not wasting their time on those that won’t go anywhere.
Determine the criteria you’ll use to decide whether to proceed with a lead or disqualify it. Some common frameworks for lead qualification include BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) and MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion). Then, make sure everyone is using these criteria.
#3 Properly prioritize sales opportunities
You’ve identified a list of sales opportunities. But you can’t tackle them all at the same time.
Not all sales opportunities are the same. But it can be tough for sellers to determine which to prioritize.
Consider using a scoring model to help sellers rank the priority of sales opportunities based on factors including:
- Value
- Urgency
- Fit
#4 Accurately track all opportunities
When it comes to sales opportunity management, organization is key. Sales reps must organize and track the progress of each opportunity. Be sure to provide your sellers with the right tools and processes to track all opportunities accurately without wasting a lot of time.
#5 Keep buyers engaged
A sales rep isn’t going to win a sales opportunity by letting it sit there. Instead, sellers must actively engage the prospect to keep the deal moving forward.
Encourage sellers to set reminders for follow-up and next steps. This will keep leads engaged to the finish line.
#6 Streamline and automate mundane, time-consuming tasks
Engaging and managing sales opportunities involves several moving pieces. Many tasks are time-consuming and tedious—yet necessary. Look for opportunities to streamline or automate these tedious tasks.
For example, you can automate follow-up emails based on triggers or any time a specific time has passed. You can also enable your sellers to leverage generative AI to help them draft emails, saving time.
In addition, be sure the tools in your tech stack work well together. For example, your revenue enablement platform should seamlessly integrate with your CRM. That way, activity in the revenue enablement platform can automatically be logged in the CRM, saving the seller the time and hassle of manually logging activities in separate platforms.
#7 Invest in the right sales opportunity management tools
Solid sales opportunity management requires the right tools and technology. For example, sellers need a CRM to centralize all key details about an opportunity. They also need an integrated revenue enablement platform to access the knowledge, training, and tools needed to engage with prospects throughout the purchase journey.
Invest in tools that integrate with your existing tech stack. In addition, consider swapping point tools for integrated platforms that address several needs or pain points from one solution. That way, sellers can spend less time juggling disparate tools – and more time moving sales opportunities through the pipeline.
#8 Leverage data
Sales opportunity management strategies aren’t written in stone. Instead, they must evolve.
Track key metrics to identify what’s working and what’s not. Then, use those insights to optimize your practice.
Start converting more sales opportunities to customers
Your sellers have a limited number of hours in the day. With sales opportunity management, sellers can prioritize the most qualified leads – and convert more of them to customers.
Close More Sales Opportunities
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