What is a Sales Opportunity?

A sales opportunity is a lead who is qualified and has a high probability of becoming a customer. This lead has entered into your sales cycle and the salesperson has initiated the selling process with the lead. The opportunity is the foundation of each sale of a sales rep. After qualification, the opportunity defines the pipeline of the selling process for a salesperson.

Difference between Sales Lead and Sales Opportunity?

A lead is an individual or a company that is a contact and yet to be qualified. The information about a lead could be generated from a marketing campaign, inbound data or intent data. The contact might have downloaded content or filled out a form.

On the other hand, sales opportunities are people or accounts that have been qualified. The salesperson has contacted the lead and after discussing their needs and proper assessment, the lead is converted to an opportunity. They’re in your pipeline and are in touch with you. You feel good about the possibility of closing the deal.

What is opportunity management?

The journey of a qualified lead to a customer is very much dependent on how a salesperson manages the sales opportunity. Opportunity management is based on sales pipeline management methodology.

Having a pipeline management system will provide you with the sales road-map that helps guide your sales efforts by following a systematic sales process. With opportunity management, a salesperson can smoothly process the lead in the pipeline with complete visibility and efficiency. It adds visibility to your sales pipeline by giving you a real-time overview of where all your opportunities are nicely aligned along with your sales process steps. A sales pipeline helps you understand the process and efficiently increase your sales.

Here are some benefits of using opportunity management for sales operations:

• Optimize the sales process: Keep your opportunities moving forward through workflows and maintain maximum sales velocity.
• Improve your win rates: By having complete visibility through the pipeline, you can capture the pain point easily and address what you need to do next and how to complete each sales step.
• Enhance your opportunities insights: Use a data-driven approach and analyze your pipeline. Through powerful insights, you can focus on the opportunities that matter the most.
• Prioritize your opportunities: Prioritize the deals according to the feasibility of converting the opportunity into a customer.