Each company will have similar, yet customized stages to qualify opportunities. The key steps of your Sales Cycle are what Odoo calls Stages. You can use the stages to improve your sales capacity, because they allow you to find out the reasons why deals succeed or fail.

Stages will allow salesmen to easily track where a specific opportunity is positioned in the sales cycle. One of the frequent difficulties in using stages is that different sales people may assess differently in which stage their sales opportunity should be. You can avoid this by clearly stating what you expect as a result for each stage. This way, your sales teams will use the same stages throughout the qualification process, allowing the sales manager to get accurate and consistent information. We also recommend to limit the number of stages in your sales cycle to make them easy to follow up and to avoid the risk of your process being too much focused on internal requirements instead of being customer-oriented.

Easily create a new stage by clicking Add a new column in the Opportunities Kanban view. To see & define stages for Opportunity qualification, you can also go to the menu Sales > Configuration > Leads & Opportunities > Stages. 

As you progress in your sales cycle, and move from one stage to another, you can expect to have more precise information about a given opportunity.

As an example, to track your opportunities, you can assign the following stages. For each stage, you assume you will define criteria that have to be met prior to moving to the next stage. 

1. New - the initial stage for your opportunities.

2. Qualification – Attract the prospect’s interest, determine whether the prospect has a need, ask the right questions and listen carefully to identify and thoroughly understand the prospect's needs.

What is the expected result?

• The need to buy the product/service has been confirmed,
• Confirm that there is a budget.
• Current pain points identified,
• Identify what the prospect wants to achieve,
• Identify the decision-maker.

3. Proposition – Discuss some solutions to determine the customer’s preferences, recommend specific solutions to answer the customer's needs.

What is the expected result?

• Demo and/or Proposal given,
• Decision-maker confirmed his interest to purchase,
• Preliminary pricing confirmed/agreed upon.

4. Negotiation – Submit the final proposal to the customer and begin the negotiation process.

What is the expected result?

• Negotiation concluded,
• Contract terms/conditions agreed upon,
• Contract submitted for signature.

5. Won/Lost – Register the final step of the opportunity.

What is the expected result?

• Contract signed / not signed,
• Next steps.

You can apply your own stages throughout the qualification process by means of the Stage field that is represented by the columns in the Opportunities Kanban view. To move an opportunity to the next step, simply drag the opportunity in Kanban view to the corresponding stage (column) or click the corresponding stage from Opportunity form view.

Stages are a flexible tool, and you can even set your stages according to sales teams.