Sales Opportunity Manager (SOM) Archives

Sales Opportunity Manager (SOM)

Manage Sales Opportunities and Sales Leads

The Sales Opportunity Manager (SOM) is an integrated part of Total Office Manager and its overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. SOM allows you to enter and track sales leads. You can set up product lists, sales closure probability lists, qualifications lists, and Sales process stages.

Form Access

From the main menu, click Customers | Sales Opportunity Manager

Field and Button Definitions

To create a new Sales Opportunity, select Sales Opportunity Manager from the Customers main Menu option and then select New Sales Opportunity.

Info Tab

Info Tab Date – Select the date Customer:Job: Select the Customer:Job for whom the Sales Opportunity is being created.
Customer:Job – Select the Customer:Job associated with this lead.
Bill to Address or Work Address – Select the button for either Bill To Address or Work Address associated with this lead.
Department – Select the Department associated with this lead.
Sales Rep – Select the Sales Rep working with this lead.
Marketing Source – Select the Marketing Source that generated the Sales Opportunity. This might be Google or Billboard.
Marketing Campaign/List – This is used as a campaign, group, audience, email list, or direct mail list. Example: “Furnace Tune-up Prospects” or “Service Agreement Sale”. These can be used to help organize an email or mailing list. The complete list can be found in the Marketing Type list.
Employee Lead – Select an employee who may have been associated with this sales opportunity.
Product – Select or create the product that has the potential to be sold. This is a required field. Description: A brief description of the product.
Financing Activity – Select from:
- Financing Offered and Bank Approved
- Financing Offered. Bank Declined. Paid Cash
- Financing Offered. Bank Declined. Sale Lost
- Client Declined Financing (Paid Cash)
- No Financing Was Offered
Description – Enter a short summary of the sales lead.
Qualified – Yes or No, determined by the list of questions you’ve created to determine whether or not a Sales lead is legitimate.
Timeframe – Choose a predefined timeframe (1-2 Weeks, 3-4 Weeks, 1-3 Months etc.)
Pop up “Notes” form when opening this Lead – Opens the Notes for the Customer:Job selected.
Follow-up Date – Select a date to follow up with the Customer:Job.
Anticipated Close Date – Select a date where the Sales Rep thinks the sale will be final.

Profile Tab

The Profile Tab provides more detail about the Lead that can be used to measure the wants and needs of the potential sale. Each question on the Profile Tab will be questions you’ve created. These questions will most likely be unique to you and your business.

Sales Opportunity Tab

Product – Auto populated from the Info Tab.
Priority – Set a priority for this lead (Low, Medium, High).
Probability – A customizable field that states the name and percentage you have to win the sales opportunity.
Stage – At what stage in the Sales Process are you? (These stages will be defined by you).
Status – What is the status of this Sales lead? (On hold, In Progress, Awarded, Not Awarded (rejected).
Estimate – If an Estimate has been created within Total Office Manager it will appear in this dropdown list.
Amount –Amount of the selected Estimate. Reason Won/Lost: Enter a brief description of what won or lost the sale.
Resolved – When was the sale won or lost? Enter a date in the date field for recording purposes.
Explain Reason – A more in-depth description of the reason behind why the sale was won or lost.

Appointment Tab

The Appointment Tab will display any Appointments that have been created. By clicking the Appointments menu button, you can select from the available options to add/edit/delete appointments accordingly.

New Appointment – Create a new Appointment.
Edit Appointment – Opens the selected Appointment if any changes need to be made.
Delete Appointment – Deletes the selected Appointment(s).
Complete Appointment – Marks the selected Appointment(s) as complete.
Find Appointment – Opens the Schedule Board to locate the Scheduled Appointment.
Memorize – Allows you to create multiple Appointments for multiple users given the same parameters of the selected Appointments.
Repeat Appointment – Allow you to have this appointment repeat on a specific date or future reoccurring dates. The User Defined Tab will list any User Defined Fields that you have set up and assigned to the Sales Opportunity Lead form.

User Defined Fields Tab

The User Defined Tab will list any User Defined Fields that you have set up and assigned to the Sales Opportunity Lead form.

Tips

We use the term “Customer:Job” to mean customers, jobs, prospects (have not spent money with the company). The Customer:Job list is where you can see all of these contact types.
The Sales Opportunity List contains a lot of features. Use the Batch Updater to change department, status, probability qualified, follow-up date, and more. You will find this feature under the Actions menu.
The Sales Opportunity List includes a column called Date of Last Sales Contact. This field shows the most recent date that a sales related entry was made in the Customer:Job’s > Contact Log. The Contact Log Topic used for that entry must be sales related. On the Contact Log Topic form, select from the “What Best Describes This Contact Log Entry”. Select any option that includes the work “Sales”.
The Sales Opportunity List includes the ability to add a Contact Log entry to two or more contacts. You will find this feature under the Actions menu.
On the bottom of the main form, you may notice “Reminders”. This lets you know there are new sales opportunities that do not have a Status. Once the status is set, they will no longer be in that Reminders count. The idea is to allow anyone to enter leads and notify the main person who may assign them.

FAQ

Q: Why can’t I change the Product once the Sales Opportunity has been saved in Total Office Manager?

A: In Totals Office Manager (not the app), you must select a Product to Save. This field is required because the program creates tables and other things inside the database. Those are “set” in the database. The Product you select determines the Profile Questions and the Qualification Questions. If the Product were changed later, we found it extremely difficult to programmatically resolve all of the the differences to the structure of that sales opportunity. So we decided to disallow changing it. The app does not require a Product to be selected, since the technician may not know what product is ultimately proposed. Note: We did add a Create Copy to the Sales Opportunity menu to make it fast and easy to make a copy and change the Product.

Video: Creating a Sales Opportunity in Aptora Mobile II

Sales Opportunity Manager (SOM) Work Flow

Schedule New Appointments

How to Add, Edit, and Manage Estimates for Jobs

An estimate is used describe a job and calculate its approximate cost to a customer. However, in Total Office Manager the functionality of an estimate goes well beyond that brief description.

A pick ticket can be generated from the estimate, then sent to the warehouse for the necessary parts to be gathered.

If changes are made to the estimate, a change order is automatically generated and can be added to the estimate’s details (notes) with a single click.

Work orders can be created from the estimate. This makes the process much faster and more accurate.

Either an invoice for the full amount, or progress invoices for a percentage of the original amount can be created from an estimate.

Sales receipts for immediately paid work, plus credit memos, work orders, and purchase orders can all be created from the original estimate as well, preserving the entire “flow” of efforts involved in the job.

All estimating activity can be seen in one place, such as the History form.

Form Access

From the main menu, click Customers | Create Estimate.

From the keyboard, use the shortcut Ctrl+E.

Field and Button Definitions

For the most part, the field and button definitions in the new estimate form are identical to any other sales form. Only the definitions which are unique to the Estimate form are described here. Please see the related topic, “Sales Forms” for descriptions of the common controls founds across all sales forms (invoices, credit memos, etc).

Note: Some commands may not be available until after the form is saved once.

Job Status – Select “None”, “Pending”, “Awarded”, “In Progress”, “Closed”, or “Not Awarded” as applicable. This is not mandatory. Job Status selections are “hard coded” in the program and are not editable.

Menu | Create | Invoice – Opens the “Create Progress Invoice Based On Estimate” window, which is used to invoice for the entire amount of the estimate or a certain percentage. See the related topic, “Create Invoice From Estimate” for more details.

Menu | Create | Sale – Opens the New Sale form used to record the transaction when the customer pays for the work in full at the time when the work is performed.

Menu | Create | Purchase Order – Opens the New PO form, used for authorizing personnel to make company purchases.

Extended Information About Estimates

The Estimate (AKA Proposal) feature in Total Office Manager does not include information that will help predict the profitability of a job. This was not our intention. If you are interested in knowing whether or not the job you are proposing is profitable, this feature will not give you a definitive answer.

The Estimate is simply a document. You can think of it as a sales proposal you may fill out by hand. However, in Total Office Manager it is automated and may be converted to a sale.

If you are utilizing Total Office Manager’s powerful inventory features, the Estimate will be able to give you an idea of gross profit (sale price less the cost of direct expenses) but certainly not net profit (sale price less direct expenses and overhead).

Remember, in order for you to be able to see meaningful information about your direct expenses (the price you pay for labor, materials, parts, sub contractors, and other direct expenses), you must be using Total Office Manager’s inventory features properly. That means you must setup inventory items, receive items into inventory, enter bills, and pay bills. If you skip any of these processes, you will not have meaningful profit information.

Will this job be profitable? The best way to approach this question is to perform a detailed breakeven analysis of labor and MESO (materials, parts, sub contractors, and other direct expenses). A breakeven analysis allows you to calculate the price that you must charge in order to breakeven. That is to say; cover all direct expenses and cover all overhead. You would then add money for net profit. Once this is done, you will know how much it costs to provide an hour of labor and sell, for example, a furnace.

Once you know the price that is required to breakeven, you would add an appropriate amount for net profit. Total Office Manager includes a number of ways to markup labor and MESO. These methods may be found under the Company menu.

In Summary

use the Estimate feature to create a comprehensive list of parts, materials, equipment, sub contractors, and labor related duties for the job. If these items have been marked up properly and the job is performed as predicted, you will have the profit you projected.

Tips on Estimates and Estimating Jobs

Invoices can be created from estimates with a few clicks of the mouse. Example: You offer a customer an estimate to replace their furnace. They accept. Return to the estimate to create the invoice.

An invoice created from an estimate can be edited and changed independently of the estimate.

Estimates can be changed at anytime to reflect changes in the actual work being performed. ie: if a “Change Order” is written up for a job, return to the estimate and change it accordingly. The program will automatically generate an internal change order which can be added to the estimate’s details (notes) with a single click, keeping everything updated. See the related topic, “Change Order” for details.

Estimates are used for auditing/paper trail purposes and do not actually affect any COA accounts. It is not until an invoice or sale is created that COA accounts are affected (ie: A/R, Inventory, etc).

Help Topics Related to Estimates and Estimating

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Sales Opportunity Manager (SOM)