How to generate more revenue with targeted opportunity management

Effective opportunity management helps companies maximize their revenue potential and ensure long-term growth. In theory, the ideal customer journey looks like this: From first contact, through lead and opportunity management, to closing the sale. But things don’t always go as they do in theory. Sales projects often fail to close because the contact person is not the relevant decision maker, the sales potential has been incorrectly assessed or prioritized, and planning and implementation in the team is doomed to failure from the outset. This is why proper opportunity management is critical to closing sales. In this blog post, you will learn what is meant by opportunity management, why it is so important and how to use it in a targeted way to increase your sales.

What is Opportunity Management?

An opportunity is a sales opportunity or a distribution possibility for a company, where the potential customer’s project is considered an “opportunity” because there is a prospect of successfully closing the sale. Opportunity management is thus focused on the process and management of sales opportunities. The process involves identifying prospects, qualifying and tracking opportunities throughout the sales cycle – from lead to order. Opportunity management is supported by the use of CRM systems and other tools.
The aim of opportunity management is to increase sales success by targeting and supporting potential customers in the various phases of the sales process, resulting in more sales being closed.

7 steps to successful opportunity management in B2B sales

Essentially, the opportunity management process includes the following steps:

1. identification of sales opportunities:

The first step oris to identify potential sales opportunities. This can be done through market analyses, lead generation, customer conversations or other sources of information. For the efficient processing of qualified opportunities, it is important to define clear criteria as to when a sales opportunity is a real sales opportunity in the first place.
2. Qualifying the opportunities:

Once potential sales opportunities have been identified, it is critical to evaluate and qualify them. Careful consideration should be given to whether an opportunity is realistic, whether the potential customer has any real interest at all, and whether the new sales opportunity aligns with the company’s own goals. A thorough qualification helps to focus on the most promising opportunities.

Among other things, the so-called BANT criteria can help here:
B – Budget: What budget does the interested party have at his disposal
A- Authority: Does the interested party have decision-making authority?
N- Need: Is there a need in his company?
T – Time: In what period of time does the investment/use of the services take place?
3. tracking of opportunities:

It is also critical to actively process qualified sales opportunities to track progress through the sales cycle. This may include, but is not limited to, documenting conversations, proposals, negotiations, and other interactions with potential customers. The goal of all actions should always be to drive the sales process forward and overcome obstacles to ultimately close the sale.
4. opportunities management:

Effective opportunity management also includes managing the sales pipeline (called pipeline management), including prioritizing opportunities, assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, monitoring KPIs, and conducting regular reporting. This enables better control of the entire sales process and identification of bottlenecks or optimization opportunities.
5. customer relationship management:

Good opportunity management goes beyond the pure sales process. It is about building and maintaining a long-term customer relationship and creating trust with the customer. A company should ensure that sales people are engaged and attuned to the needs of customers. They should maintain regular contact with the customers and prospects and offer their support on a regular basis to ensure that the customers / prospects are satisfied. After all, satisfied customers and prospects are more likely to close the sale, buy from you again, and make referrals.
6. collaboration within the team:

Often, different departments are involved in the processing of an opportunity. Therefore, seamless collaboration between sales people, sales managers, marketing teams, product managers and other relevant departments is enormously important. It must be ensured that all relevant information on opportunities is accessible to all team members involved. Clear communication and regular exchanges help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and can work together on opportunities.
7. closing, follow-up and analysis of the opportunities:

After successfully closing or even losing a sales opportunity, it is important to analyze the process. Trends, patterns and success factors should be identified to make informed decisions for the next times to continuously improve the sales strategy. Regular reporting processes help track progress, measure performance indicators and identify opportunities for improvement. Small tip: use a CRM analysis tool for this purpose.

Prerequisites for good opportunity management

A solid database is crucial to manage opportunities properly. Therefore, it is important that customer data in the CRM system is up-to-date, complete, and accurate. Regular data cleansing and updating is required to ensure accurate information about customers and potential sales opportunities.

Considering the overall success of an opportunity and the subsequent processes, the CRM system is ideally integrated with SAP ERP or S/4HANA to map an end-to-end process. A prerequisite for this is the prior definition of the processes in order to map them afterwards.

Conclusion: This is why good opportunity management is so important

By effectively managing opportunities, companies can increase sales efficiency, improve conversion rates, and increase revenue. It also supports long-term customer retention and the building of strong customer relationships. So it pays to focus on good opportunity management and consider it as part of the sales strategy.

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In Episode #42, we talk about how to systematically process sales opportunities to maximize success.

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About the author

Stefan EllerCRM Visionary and Managing Director itmX

Stefan is a visionary, innovator and CRM evangelist from the very beginning. Since the early 90s he has been moved by the topics of Marketing, Sales and Service. Furthermore, the topics of integration and user experience have accompanied him since the beginning of his career.