We keep talking about customers and we keep talking about Odoo-Kanak's CRM (Customer Relationship Management), but this time from the internal point of view of the workflow organization. Odoo's flagship app clearly distinguishes between initiatives and opportunities, so it is important that the sales team is aware of the difference between one thing and another when using and configuring it. Odoo qualifies as an opportunity those clients who are already in contact with the system, with their information, specific interest, etc., and are directed directly to the salespeople so that they can communicate with them throughout the entire commercial flow.
In contrast, the initiatives are potential clients that could have come to us a bit of a bounce, even due to confusion regarding what our business markets. For example, it could be the case that a person looking for a painter contacted our paint sales company. If so, the client may not even be interested in starting a conversation with our company salespeople. This, of course, would waste a significant amount of effort and energy on the sales team. Do you want to give yourself that luxury?
It will depend a bit on how customers reach your business, but to avoid unnecessary communication and effort, it would be enough to create an extra stage that includes the qualification of this customer's interest. The initiatives do not appear in the Odoo system automatically so you should go to the CRM module settings and check the option that says Initiatives. This is a very simple step and one that can help you maximize the efforts of your sales team as early identification of those customers that are not really potential would allow you to focus on those opportunities that do have a chance of materializing.
Once you have created the Initiatives stage, you are ready to start managing them. Let's say you are at a fair in Frankfurt where you have been given a card from someone who has shown interest in your products. Right there in Germany, he opens his computer, logs into the system and manually enters that person's data in the Initiatives stage so that the sales team will take it into account and know that a new one has entered. At that moment, you can even decide which sales team you can assign it to (Latin America, Europe…) and assign it a priority level according to the conversation you have had with the person who gave you the card.
After the conversation, he is optimistic and gives the initiative a 3-star priority because the customer has asked very accurate questions about one of his products. In addition, it adds a label of the specific product in which this person has shown interest. We remind you that both the labels or the reasons for losses of initiatives or opportunities can be created in the CRM configuration and will respond to the particularities of your business.
The manager who is in Germany and has entered the data that appears on the card can also go to the reports section of these initiatives and see how many are active at the moment, in addition to the salesperson who has them assigned. If, for example, you realized that a salesperson has 5 initiatives and another only 1 could make decisions about who would be the most appropriate person to take care of it.
The file with the data of the initiative allows you to assign a specific salesperson and also, without leaving the file, send an email to the potential client indicating that very soon the company's sales staff will contact them to follow up on the conversation in Frankfurt. The salesperson who will be in charge of the initiative will be able to see in its history all the steps taken and conversations held with that client and will not waste time repeating them, or requesting detailed information on the history of communications.
The system also allows very practical things such as setting up a specific email for a specific sales team that would make all the contact forms coming from Latin America on our website, for example, go directly to that team. (americalatina@nubistalia.com) When the Latin American team receives a form, it proceeds to qualify it as an Opportunity by pressing a button and at that moment it is assigned to a specific salesperson. In this way, when the manager consults the team's Sales Flow, he will be able to check which initiatives and opportunities Latin America has received and who manages them.
Finally, add that initiatives can be loaded by importing an Excel or CSV file, so it is not necessary to enter the data manually, as we have seen in the example of the Frankfurt manager.
If you want more information on how information flows in the Odoo-Kanak CRM, you can read other blogs on the various topic and / or communicate directly with us: https://kanakinfosystems.com, 
https://kanakinfosystems.com/odoo-development-services
https://kanakinfosystems.com/odoo-customization-implementation-services