The Goal: Create and customize the timeline items used to track milestones on your sales opportunities, such as when a contact first became an opportunity or when you sent a proposal.
Before You Begin:
- You need staff access to the Sales Funnel settings to add or edit timeline items.
- You can configure standard timeline items here, and you can also add timeline items “on the fly” while updating a sales opportunity.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Your sales opportunity milestones can be tracked with timeline items. Examples of milestones may include when a contact first became an opportunity, or when you sent the proposal. You can customize standard timeline items in the Sales Funnel settings and also add timeline items “on the fly” when updating your sales opportunities.
- Go to Contacts, Sales Funnel section, click Settings and select Timeline Items. A list of the timeline items you have already set up in your system will be displayed.
- Click the Add button.
- Configure the following:
- Enter a Name for the timeline item.
- Enter a Description of the timeline item.
- (Optional) Select a Sales Stage. If a sales stage is selected, when this timeline item is added to a sales opportunity, the opportunity sales stage will automatically be updated.
- (Optional) Select Is Velocity Item if you wish to be able to report on how quickly sales opportunities move through your pipeline.
- (Optional) Select a Communication Category. This can be used for filtering and reporting.
- Click Done to finalize your changes.
Common Pitfalls
- Forgetting to link a Sales Stage: If you want a timeline item to automatically advance an opportunity’s stage, you must select a Sales Stage when creating it — otherwise the stage will not update on its own.