Associate Sales Coach and Other Elements with Sales Stages

Sales Coach is a mechanism to present best practice sales methodology to salespeople to improve their sales effectiveness. A teaching tool, Sales Coach can help less experienced salespeople with aspects of an opportunity when and where they need help.

Administrators set up Sales Coach by associating action items and recommended documents with a sales stage. Salespeople can then view these items as they work their opportunities. Since the teaching components or job aids are associated with a specific sales stage, each sales stage potentially can have multiple action items and recommended documents associated with it.

Here are the elements that you can define for each sales stage:

• Sales Coach items:

  • Action items (process steps): These are recommended actions the salesperson should take while working an opportunity in a specific sales stage. Action Items appear in the Sales Coach region of the edit opportunity page.

  • Recommended documents: These are documents, files, or URLs recommended for viewing or sharing during a specific sales stage. Recommended Documents appear in the Sales Coach region of the edit opportunity page.

• Other items:

  • Task templates: You can define task templates to set tasks for salespeople to perform. For more information, see the topic, Associate Task Templates with Assessment Templates.

  • Assessment templates: Assessments let salespeople evaluate the health of an opportunity. Opportunity assessments appear under a separate tab labeled Assessments in the edit opportunity page. For more information, see the topic, Guidelines for Setting Up Opportunity Assessments.

  • Required fields: You can mark specific fields as required for a specific sales stage. When a salesperson moves an opportunity to that sales stage, the fields you mark as required become marked with an asterisk that users must complete before moving to the next sales stage.

    Note: The required fields validation doesn't support check box fields so don't mark check box fields as a required field for a specific sales stage.

Add Action Items (Process Steps)

Here's how to add action items to a sales stage. Note that in the setup pages, action items are set up in the Process Steps region.

1. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to:

   • Offering: Sales

   • Functional Area: Opportunities

   • Task: Manage Sales Methods and Sales Stages

2. From the Manage Sales Methods page, click the sales method whose sales stages you want to modify.

   The Edit Sales Method page appears.

3. In the Edit Sales Method page, click the sales stage you want to modify. In the upper portion of the page, it's assumed you would have already entered the core information for the sales stage. For more information about these fields, see the topic, Create and Edit Sales Methods and Stages.

4. In the Process Steps region, click the create icon to create a process step. Enter your process step information. For example, a first process step or action item might be "Gather High Level Information from Customer".

   Process steps show up as Action Items in the Sales Coach region in the edit opportunity pages. The action items show up only when the opportunity is in the sales stage that you associated with the process steps.

5. Save your changes.

Add Recommended Documents

To add recommended documents, edit a sales stage using the steps outlined in the preceding procedure, Adding Action Items (Process Steps). In the Recommended Documents region, attach documents, files, or URLs that you want your salespeople to have access to in the edit opportunity pages. For example, you can give your salespeople access to marketing materials, collateral, or websites. Recommended documents are available in the edit opportunity page when the salesperson is editing the opportunity in the sales stage that's associated with these documents.