1. Closing an Opportunity
After you work with a
prospect or customer to determine whether he or she wants to purchase
from your organization, you close the opportunity record to indicate
what the customer decided. Closing
an opportunity does not delete the record; Microsoft Dynamics CRM just
deactivates the record and updates its status so that it no longer
appears in the active opportunities list. A won opportunity is one in which the customer decided to purchase from you, and a lost opportunity is one in which there was no purchase.
A lost opportunity does
not necessarily mean that the customer purchased from someone else. You
might close the opportunity as lost if the customer canceled the
purchase decision or put it on indefinite hold. As with lead
disqualification, your administrator can customize the reasons for
marking an opportunity as lost so that you can report this type of data.
Furthermore, if you lost the opportunity to a competitor, you can
record which competitor you lost to for reporting and analysis.
Tip:
As with all
records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the software automatically logs date
and time stamps for changes to the opportunity record. If you ever need
to find out when someone closed an opportunity, you can access this
information by navigating to the audit history located in the entity
navigation pane and then filtering on the Status field.
In this exercise, you will close an opportunity as won.
Note:
SET UP
Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft
Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
Open the Sonoma Partners Sample Opportunity record.
On the ribbon, click the Close as Won button.
The Close
Opportunity dialog box appears, with a default status value of Won.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically populates the Actual Revenue field
with the value from the Est. Revenue field from the opportunity. It also
uses today’s date as the close date by default.
Click OK. Microsoft Dynamics CRM closes the opportunity and updates its status as Won.
Tip:
To close an opportunity as lost, you would follow a similar procedure but would start the process by clicking the Close As Lost button on the ribbon.
2. Reopening an Opportunity
The previous section
mentioned that you could close an opportunity as lost if the customer
delays the purchase decision. If you later find out that the customer
would like to reopen discussions about the potential sale, you do not
need to create a new opportunity record. Instead, you can reopen the closed
opportunity and use that record to continue tracking the sale. When you
reopen a closed opportunity, you can access all of the previously
created activity history and notes attached to the opportunity.
In this exercise, you will reopen a closed opportunity.
Note:
SET UP
Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft
Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You
need the Sonoma Partners Sample Opportunity record you closed in the
previous exercise.
Navigate to the Opportunities view.
Click the View list and select Closed Opportunities.
Find the Sonoma Partners Sample Opportunity record and double-click it to open the record.
Notice that all of the fields in the opportunity are unavailable; you cannot edit any of the values.
On the ribbon, click the Reopen Opportunity button.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM prompts you with a dialog box to confirm that you want to reopen the opportunity.
Click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM reopens the opportunity record so that you can edit its data fields and continue working with the record.
