Sales

A sale process typically consists of different stages. For each stage, you have certain activities and perhaps documents that need to be completed. With every activity and every stage completed, you will get closer to closing the sale.

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Key info

• A unique ID
• A short descriptive heading
• An amount
• An (expected) closing date
• The type of sale
• A status
• The seller and the customer

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Currency

Currency options depend on a couple of things:

• Whether the use of currency has been enabled
• The base currency setting
• The local (own) currency setting

Currency exchange rates are fixed and apply to all sales. You can change them manually in the Settings and maintenance (or programmatically). The base currency is the currency with an exchange rate equal to 1. Other exchange rates are expressed relative to this.

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Currency conversion

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Stakeholders

A sale has a main contact, but partners and subcontractors may also be involved in the sale. These are referred to as stakeholders and can be either individuals, organizations, or a mix. This can be turned off using the preference in Settings and maintenance > Preferences > Sale > Enable Stakeholders (default yes). With this preference turned on a new archive is presented for sales of type. This will also make the sale visible on more than one company sales archive if Enable Stakeholders is set.

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Sales guides

Using a guide will simplify and structure the sales process for the sales staff with suggestions for which follow-ups to do and which documents to create at each stage.

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Sale type

A sale type is a named set of reuseable info that will help you standardize the sale process. Aside from the name and ID, you’ll find info such as:

• The expected duration
• Whether it has stakeholders
• Whether a sales guide is available
• Percentages for discount and profit
• Stages

Some sale types have an associated sales guide. For those types, it’s important to understand stages and how to work with suggested activities.

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Stages

Each stage has a set of suggested activities. There is also a setting controlling whether the sale will automatically advance to the next stage when the last guided activity in a stage is completed. The sequence of the stages is determined by the rank of each stage. Example process:

1. Lead
2. First meeting
3. Proposal
4. Second meeting
5. Short-list
6. Verbal acceptance

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Suggested activities

Suggested activities are just that - suggested. They’re blueprints that can be used to create actual follow-ups and documents. The blueprints sit in the intersection between sale types and stages. A sale type can have many stages, and a stage can apply to multiple sale types. The SaleTypeStageLink table connects them all.

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Status of a sale

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Stalled sales

A sale might become stalled if, say, the customer decides to wait until next year before purchasing. When this happens, the next activity changes to the re-open date. The seller should then set up a future meeting or phone call to follow up the stalled sale.

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Quote management

In sales, a quote allows a prospective buyer to see the costs of selected products and/or services. It can contain multiple alternatives for the customer to choose between. Quotes are what connects products to a sale. You must record a sale before you can add a quote. Also, products must have been registered before you can add them to a quote.

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Key info

• A unique ID
• The corresponding sale
• An ERP connection
• A version
• Alternatives
• Products
• A state

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Versions

There may be multiple versions of a quote, but only 1 of them is active at any time. Each version will have 1 or more alternatives, which in turn will have 1 or more quote lines. When updating quotes, you’ll always be working on the latest version.

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Alternatives and quote lines

Each alternative can contain different products, numbers of products, prices, and discounts. You should set the quantity and any discounts for the selected product. A discount can be specified as:

• A percentage rate
• A discount amount
• A total amount

The estimated sales amount for the sale (forecast) is obtained from the total amount for the favorite alternative.

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Products and price lists

Each product belongs to a single price list. A price list can either be cached from an ERP system or set up in SuperOffice CRM.

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ERP

You might be working with a tenant that is integrated with an ERP system. In that case, the ERP connection determines where the product information and prices are obtained from.

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Quote connectors

SuperOffice has a simple product and price-list system built in, but using quote connectors you can access products and price lists in other systems from inside SuperOffice.

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VAT

The SuperOffice quote connector will calculate the VAT amount of an alternative based on the VAT percent of the individual lines.

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Quote documents

Quote documents will be saved as activities on a sale. They’re tied to a specific quote version.

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State

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Status

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Sales and quotes vs. other entities

When working with sales and quotes, data will often intersect with the following entities:

• Follow-ups (appointment table)
• Documents
• Company (contact table)
• Contact (person table)
• Project

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How-tos

• Sale management in the UI
• Using CRMScript