Opportunities and Pipeline

Typically, sales representatives find themselves competing against other organizations to win a customer's business. Knowing the competition can be the biggest asset when it comes to closing a sale. If you find that a competitor organization is involved in a sales opportunity, you can associate the competitor with the opportunity.

By associating competitors with opportunity records, you provide sales team members with any easy way to determine which organizations they are competing against. The sales representatives can then look at any product or category code information that might assist them in gaining a competitive edge during the sales cycle. Besides knowing the customer, knowing the competition can be the single most important piece of information when trying to win a sale.

To associate a competitor with an existing opportunity, you access the opportunity record and attach the competitor to the opportunity. At times, you might want to create a new opportunity for a competitor. For example, you might find that one of your customers is working with a competitor organization to purchase products. Now that you are aware that the customer is in the market for the specified product, you might decide to contact them and try and sell them your product. You can create a new opportunity directly from the competitor record. You can then use this opportunity record to track all related sales information.

If you have associated competitors with existing opportunities, or you have added new opportunities to the competitor, you can view the competitor's pipeline. The pipeline displays, at a glance, the amount of potential revenue that the competitor can realize, or that your organization can lose, if the competitor wins the sales. Viewing the competitor's pipeline can also help an organization determine how strong the competition is in the marketplace.