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What an Opportunity Is

An enquiry is inbound: a customer came to you and is waiting on a reply. An opportunity is the opposite. Nobody is waiting, nothing will arrive in your inbox, and if you forget about it the work quietly goes elsewhere.

Typical ones:

• A company that has booked the same Christmas function three years running.
• An annual conference, awards night or open day that comes round every year.
• A wedding anniversary or a milestone birthday you heard about at the last event.

They get their own board so they never compete with inbound leads. Enquiries are answered because a customer is waiting; opportunities are worked because you decided to.

Logging One from Scratch

On the Opportunities board, click New opportunity. The form is the enquiry form with the parts that do not apply removed: there is no source to choose, because the source is you.

• Existing customer (optional): start typing and pick them. Their contact details come along, so you are not retyping what you already hold.
• Contact details: name, company, email, phone, for a prospect you have no record of yet.
• Event: type, date, guest count, location. The date can be your best guess. Tick Approximate / date not confirmed and it stops reading as a commitment.
• Services requested: staff, equipment hire, beverage service, if you already know.
• Estimated value: what you think the booking is worth. Your own figure, not something the customer said, and it is what lets a board of maybes add up to a number.
• Follow-up dates: the point of the whole exercise. More on these below.
• Notes: why you think this is worth chasing, and anything you learned last time.

Click Add opportunity and it lands on the board.

Logging a Repeat from an Existing Quote

The fastest way in, and the one worth building a habit around. Any quote will do, not only last year's: open the quote and choose Log repeat opportunity from the Actions menu. Once the event day has passed it is promoted to a button of its own on the order page, so the prompt to book next year's is in front of you while you are looking at what you delivered.

It opens the opportunity form already filled in. Carried across from the job: the customer and contact, the company, the guest count, and the address the event actually ran at (or the venue, for a venue hire). Worked out for you:

• The date: the next anniversary of the event still ahead of you, marked approximate, because a year out it is a placeholder rather than a booking.
• A follow-up: pencilled in two months before that date, and never in the past, so a repeat logged late does not land on the board already overdue.
• Estimated value: the last job's total, less discounts and before tax. A repeat is worth roughly what the one before it was.

Check it over, add any more reminders you want, and save. The opportunity keeps a link back to the order it repeats, so when you come to quote it you can see exactly what they had and what they paid.

Doing this as you close off each event is far easier than trying to reconstruct next year's pipeline from memory in January.

Follow-Up Reminders

An inbound enquiry has a customer waiting, so the board can show you how long they have been waiting. An opportunity has nobody waiting, so instead it carries the dates you chose to reach out on. The board shows the next one still outstanding.

You can set several, which is usually the right answer for something a year out. A reminder in six months to check the date has not moved, another a month before to make the call, another a fortnight later if you heard nothing.

Each reminder can name who gets emailed when it falls due:

• Your account address, for anything the team should see.
• A specific team member, when one person owns the relationship.
• A typed address, for somebody outside the usual list.
• Nobody, if it is just a date you want to see on the board.

Reminders that name a recipient go out on the morning they fall due, and only once. Move the date and the reminder arms again for the new one. Every reminder also appears in Tasks, alongside the rest of your work.

When the opportunity becomes a quote, or that quote is accepted, any reminders still open are ticked off automatically. You will not be chased to chase a customer who has already said yes.

Working the Board

Opening an opportunity gives you the same panel as an enquiry: details on the left, quote setup on the right, with notes, emails, tags and a manager. Everything in Processing Enquiries applies here in the same way.

The two useful differences:

• The panel leads with the follow-ups, because the date you next act is the thing you came to check.
• It carries an Estimated value, which an inbound enquiry does not. An enquiry has a budget the customer gave you; an opportunity has whatever you reckon it is worth.
• If it was logged from a past order, the opportunity says which one, and links to it.

The board shows that estimate as five circles rather than a figure, because a column of exact-looking money invites a precision a guess has not got. They fill against the average quote you have won in the last twelve months, to the nearest half: an ordinary job for you sits at two and a half circles, and five means twice your average. Hover for the figure, which is also on the opportunity itself.

Rows with no estimate show a dash, and until you have won a quote in the last twelve months there is nothing to measure against, so the column stays empty.

When the customer says yes, convert it exactly like an enquiry. It moves onto Quotes pending and is counted in your win and loss reporting with everything else, so outbound work is measured the same way as inbound.

If it comes to nothing, use Mark as processed (no quote) or Archive to take it off the board. An opportunities board full of events that happened last year is one nobody reads.

Getting the Most Out of It

• Log the repeat while you are closing off this year's event, not next year.
• Always set at least one follow-up. An opportunity with no date on it is a note, and notes do not get actioned.
• Work backwards from the event: when would they normally start planning, and reach out before that.
• Use an approximate date rather than leaving it blank. A rough date still sorts and still reminds you.
• Give it a manager if more than one of you sells. Unassigned opportunities are the ones that get missed.