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Sales flow : From Lead to Quote Process in Salesforce

 A lead is someone who is interested in the products or services from your organization. These leads in salesforce are generated via Campaigns, Content Marketing, Seminars and Advertising etc.

Technically in Salesforce, Leads are created via

1. Manual creation
2. Bulk File import
3. Social Media
4. Out-of-Box functionality such as Web-to-Lead or Email to Lead
5. Email Services
6. Live Agent (Chat sessions)
7. CTI integration (Tele Sales)
8. Integration from other Systems

Once the lead is qualified, It can be converted into Salesforce Account, Contact and Opportunity.

Account, Contact and Opportunity : 

Account is a company or a person with whom your company has relationship. Contact represents a person from the account we have relationship. An opportunity represents a prospective sale and it contains relevant sales data.

Once opportunity is created and it has to go through various stages before it is closed. These stages can be customized as per our company needs. The below list has the default stages of opportunity.

New : Assigned when the lead is converted.

Needs Analysis : First meeting is held with customer and list of requirements are gathered.

Proposal Creation : Requirements and solutions are determined

Proposal Presentation : Scheduled meeting to show the proposal

Negotiation : Prospect agrees to the proposal. Contract will be created at this stage. Prospect agrees to the contract and issues price order.

Closed Won : When PO is approved. An invoice is generated. The prospect pay for the product. The product will be shipped.

Closed Lost : Prospect ends the sales cycle

Once the opportunity comes to 'Negotiation' stage, The QTC (Quote to Cash) process will start. Quote consists of the quantity and price per unit of the produces along with discount information.

Quote to Cash: 

Many organisation will configure CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) solution to speed up the process of generating quotes. This helps the sales person giving incorrect prices, unapproved discounts, or promising customers configurations that are unavailable.

Once the discount and prices are approved, The Quote will be generated and sent to the customer. If customer accepts the quote, Price order will be issued.

The price order will be processed and invoice is created. The customer pays for the product. The opportunity will be closed as 'Closed Won'

If the customer does not accept the quote, The price of the quote will be negotiated  which follow the QTC process again. If the negotiation with customer fails, the opportunity is closed as 'Closed Lost'



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