Over the past several years, I’ve been asked many times about tools that automatically create call down lists for sales and customer services teams:
“I have lists of people or companies in my NetSuite system that I want my sales people to call, is there any way to create phone calls for each of these entries?”
“When leads respond to our NetSuite marketing campaigns, I have to manually create a phone call record for my sales people. Is there any way to automate this?”
“I want to create a call down list of contacts or companies in NetSuite but I can’t get them to fall off of my saved search list…”
In response to this, I asked a couple of the software engineers at ERP guru if they could develop a NetSuite configuration that enables users to create a phone call task for contacts or companies using the results from a saved search.
This script requires users to create a saved search and configure the parameters for when a sales rep. would be given a phone call task.
Now, you may be asking, “Who does the phone call get assigned to?” or, “Can I control the number of calls it assigns per day?”
The configurable parameters allow you to define who the call is assigned to and how many calls they should be assigned per day—it can even take into account weekend!
I have been using this script for over a week now, and I can say that so far it works flawlessly. We haven’t packaged this as a stand-alone add-on just yet, but we can definitely configure this script for someone if they are interested.
This configuration will save time starting with it’s first use, so that the cost of implementing it really just pays for itself in the end.
Don’t hesitate to drop us a line if this is something that interests you!
2010/10/14
Close rate, forecasting and velocity reporting
NetSuite is a great Sales Forecasting tool. Using the status field, it calculates the weighted value of your opportunities. With this data, it is possible to estimate the dollar value of expected sales in a given period.
The tricky part is in approximating the probability of success associated with each status.
Luckily, we had historical data saved in our NetSuite instance going back to 2005. We simply repeated a process to determine the historical success rate of every lead in the last two years.
To get this data, create a custom report to extract the status of the opportunity before it was changed to lost. (old value = closed-lost). Along with the total number of opportunities won, we now have the number of lost opportunities necessary to properly calculate the probability per status.
We did not expect the new result to match the standard probability that was set two years ago. Since then, we have added another list field on our opportunity records to track the services in question.
After a modification to the previous report, we now have the probability of closing a given opportunity per service.
Putting it in action
With the help of some easy scripts, our opportunity now shows the right probability based on status and service. This greatly increases the accuracy of our monthly reports.
Now that we have our close rate:
Let’s take it to the next level. What should my funnel look like in one, two or three months? I can guess the close date of my opportunities, but what are the real historical stats?
Assuming my marketing team continues to provide me with the forecasted quantity and quality of leads, and I know my close rate, how do I forecast when the deals will close?
My sales team can give me an educated guess on how long it takes to convert a lead to closed-won or prospect, as well as how long it takes to convert a prospect to closed-won. Typically, they will be making an educated guess based on experience. New representatives have a tendency to give more aggressive numbers, whereas more experienced reps will sand bag it and give you longer time lines.
I wanted and needed the real data to show me the numbers so I could build a more accurate revenue forecast. This information can also be used to coach my sales team or alert me to deals that are at risk as they are running too long.
Once again, we had the data in NetSuite so we just had to create a set of saved searches to show the real data.
Reports indicating the length of time for a deal to move from stage to stage until closed are commonly referred to as sales velocity reports.
I know this post was a bit complicated, but I wanted, at the very least, to introduce readers to the possibility of velocity reports and to show that they are do-able in NetSuite. Sometime soon, we will likely have a training webinar on this.
The tricky part is in approximating the probability of success associated with each status.
Luckily, we had historical data saved in our NetSuite instance going back to 2005. We simply repeated a process to determine the historical success rate of every lead in the last two years.
To get this data, create a custom report to extract the status of the opportunity before it was changed to lost. (old value = closed-lost). Along with the total number of opportunities won, we now have the number of lost opportunities necessary to properly calculate the probability per status.
We did not expect the new result to match the standard probability that was set two years ago. Since then, we have added another list field on our opportunity records to track the services in question.
After a modification to the previous report, we now have the probability of closing a given opportunity per service.
Putting it in action
With the help of some easy scripts, our opportunity now shows the right probability based on status and service. This greatly increases the accuracy of our monthly reports.
Now that we have our close rate:
- How long does it take to close a deal? (from lead to closed-won)
- How long does it take for a lead to convert to a Prospect?
- How long does it take for a Prospect to convert to a Closed-Won deal?
Let’s take it to the next level. What should my funnel look like in one, two or three months? I can guess the close date of my opportunities, but what are the real historical stats?
Assuming my marketing team continues to provide me with the forecasted quantity and quality of leads, and I know my close rate, how do I forecast when the deals will close?
My sales team can give me an educated guess on how long it takes to convert a lead to closed-won or prospect, as well as how long it takes to convert a prospect to closed-won. Typically, they will be making an educated guess based on experience. New representatives have a tendency to give more aggressive numbers, whereas more experienced reps will sand bag it and give you longer time lines.
I wanted and needed the real data to show me the numbers so I could build a more accurate revenue forecast. This information can also be used to coach my sales team or alert me to deals that are at risk as they are running too long.
Once again, we had the data in NetSuite so we just had to create a set of saved searches to show the real data.
Reports indicating the length of time for a deal to move from stage to stage until closed are commonly referred to as sales velocity reports.
I know this post was a bit complicated, but I wanted, at the very least, to introduce readers to the possibility of velocity reports and to show that they are do-able in NetSuite. Sometime soon, we will likely have a training webinar on this.
