The Salesforce.com Opportunity record keeps the details of a deal together. This should be customized to capture all the details for closing a sale. This can include:
- Information about the deal
- Files supporting the sale
- Pipeline and probability information
- Activities with people
One of the important parts to keep your team coordinated is understanding who is involved in the deal. These are known as Contact Roles. These are the people involved in making the Opportunity happen. This orients your team to who the people are for success. Here are some of the roles to consider within the context of an Opportunity.
- Decision Maker: The person who has the final say
- Influencer: A person who informs the decision maker on your value
- Technical Buyer: This is typically someone evaluating your product or service from the technical aspect
- User: This is an end user of your product or service. Their opinion is relevant for the Decision Maker to examine productivity gains.
- Economic Buyer: This person is looking for the ROI
- Referrer: This is a role which brought the Opportunity and referred the customer. You can look at their Contact record and see all of the referrals they had made by the associate Opportunities.
- Partner: This is any partner that is part of fulfilling the expectations of the deal that may be used. An attorney, designer or third-party that will service the Opportunity should be labeled as such.
- Vendor: This can be a supplier of a standard product or service to the Opportunity.
- Project Manager: This is a post-sales role of the person that may be interfacing with your team.
The roles which will be relevant to your process will be specific to what is involved in how your business works. Think these through and capture them. Ensure your team captures each role and then associates the respective Contacts to the Opportunity record. This will provide a complete picture of who is involved.
With the respective data relationships, each Contact record in turn will reflect the Opportunities that they are a part of as well to provide context for how Contacts relate to deals. It’s an important area I work through with Salesforce consulting clients.
What are some Contact Roles relevant in your world?
