Understanding opportunities
Opportunities are the main component of your sales pipeline. Within the sales cycle, once you convert a lead—as we saw in Chapter 3, Creating and Managing Leads—all of your interactions for the sale take place in the Opportunity section.
There are many components to opportunities that drive the overall sales cycle, from initially working the opportunity to forecasting future sales for the management of your sales. We will see how opportunities work by using a business use case.
Business use case
As a sales rep for XYZ Widgets, you have been corresponding with GenePoint, the account you created in Chapter 4, Business Development with Accounts and Contacts. Your conversations have been going well and the customer asks you to send a quote. You now have to create an opportunity, add products, and create and send a quote. After this, you will see the opportunity in your sales forecast for the month and will finally be able to close...
