Table of Contents | General | Getting Started| Import-Exporting | Home Page | Deals | Documents | Contacts | Calendar | Sales Pipeline Reports
What is a deal?
PipelineDeals is built around deals. A deal quite simply is a business opportunity that you would like to track in your sales pipeline. The deals page allows you to track and find everything you need to get the deal closed in one place.
Deals usually but not always, are a company name or a company name with a description of the business opportunity. (Example – “Cisco Systems”, or “Cisco Systems – Advertising Deal”).
Deals can also be a person’s name and not a company name if you sell to individuals.
What is the deal summary?
The deal summary is a simple text description of the deal plus key sales metrics such a dollar amount ($) (e.g. what the deal is worth to your business), sales stage, a probability and expected close date.
What are deal stages?
Deal stages are steps in your sales process that you want to manage and track against. The PipelineDeals default sales stages are qualified lead, proposal, contract, and signed. You can customize deal stages and the associated sales probabilities using the Admin tool.
The deal stage is used in PipelineDeals reports and charts. In reports, you can view your sales pipeline by deal stage. Further, you can see a couple of charts that show you visually how many deals you have in each stage as well as the % of deals in a specific stage.
What do the deal statuses - red, green and yellow mean?
Deal statuses are simple visual indicators to let you know the current state of your deal. The statuses are not connected to the deal stage or probabilities of the deal. They are meant to be used as visual indicators for agents, executives and managers to quickly identify deals in a good state, bad state or somewhere in between.
In the PipelineDeals status chart, we show you the deals with the highest $ amount in each status color - red, green, and yellow. You may want to pay special attention to the deals in the red column and green columns to see if you can help move the deals into a better status, or get the deals signed.
What is an expected close date?
The expected close date is simply the date you expect your deal to be signed, won or closed. It is a key milestone for every deal in your sales pipeline.
Once you enter an expected close date, PipelineDeals will automatically create an milestone event which will display on your weekly agenda and calendar.
How do I track multiple business opportunities for one account or deal?
Simply use the Add Deal to this page link below the deal summary. You will now be able to track all of the business opportunities for one account or company. This link was formerly known as the Mini-Deals feature.
How do I add a new deal?
Click on the add deal link in the left part of the screen.
Should I create deals for all of my leads or prospects?
In general, the answer is no, but it really depends on your volume of sales leads and number of accounts associated with your sales pipeline.
If you have a very small number of leads or prospects, you can directly create a deal for every and all leads. If you have a larger amount of leads and prospects, you will only want to create deals for qualified leads.
Can I import deals from an Excel CSV file or another CRM system?
Not yet, but we are working on it.
How can I update my deals?
There are two (2) ways to update your deals.
From the Deals Page From Reports - just highlight a row, and click the edit pencil to update deal summary information.
Can I re-assign a deal to another team member?
PipelineDeals reports are even more powerful to use to balance your team’s workload by using the deal re-assignment feature. You can simply change the deal owner using the edit button from the new pipeline reports.
The deal will now appear in the new owner’s deal directory and not in the old owner’s deal directory. This is highly useful for managers and executives to balance out their sales workload in the most efficient manner. It is also very helpful in transitions for new sale professionals onto the team.
How do I rename a deal?
Click on the deal name, type a new name, and click OK to save the deal name.
How do I delete a deal?
Press the delete trash can on the upper right of the deals page opposite the deal name. Please note that only deal owners can delete deals.
What happened to my delete button and archive link?
These buttons and links are only displayed if you are the deal owner.
Can I add custom fields to the deals page?
There are no additional custom fields for deals outside of the deals stage field which can be customized in the admin tool.
Can I classify deals into specific categories?
Not yet, but we are working on it.
What are to-dos & events?
To-dos and events allow you to tack and manage all of the tasks you need to get the deal closed. You can classify each to-do or event with category such as phone, email, fax, appointment, or to-do.
How do to-do items and events work with the my calendar and weekly agenda?
To-dos and events in all categories will display on your weekly agenda. To-dos and events in all categories except email, fax and todos will display on your calendar.
Can I define custom to-do categories for my business?
Not right now. We expect to allow for this in the future if there are customer requests for this feature.
Can I setup a to-do template so I don’t have to repeat entering to-dos and events for every deal?
Yes. The administrator for you account can define a set of to-dos and events that can display for all of your deals and all of your users. In addition, to-do templates can also be defined to include expected dates for completion for each to-do or event in the sales process. The to-dos template feature works nicely with the Deal Milestones Report.
How do I associate a new or existing contacts to a deal?
Just select add new and enter the contact’s information in the system. The contact will be added to your deal as well as your contacts database. To find an existing contact, just type the last name of the contact on the deals page in the search box.
How do I use notes?
Notes are powerful ways to document your sales process for the deal. You can quickly enter a note title and text for something you want to remember.
Optionally, you could also add a contact and associate the note to both the deal and the contact. The note will automatically be stored in the contact’s profile and for the deal. For longer notes, use the documents feature.
Can I forward an email to PipelineDeals to track communications for a deal or a contact?
Yes. Simply, forward, or bcc your PipelineDeals email account. Your PipelineDeals email account is username@pipelinedeals.com. Please note that you must send in the email content from that email address that is associated with your PipelineDeals account for security and spam prevention reasons.
The email will display in your Inbox on the PipelineDeals home page for you to associate to a deal or a contact. If the email TO: address is associated with one (1) deal, we will automatically attach the note to the deal and contact profile.
What are documents?
The documents feature encompasses two items: creating simple text documents and uploading of documents associated with your sales process.
You can upload a document such as a powerpoint presentation, word, excel, pdf documents directly to the deals page. You will always have your documents related to a deal in a safe and secure place and with you if you are traveling. Documents uploaded from the deals page also will appear under the Documents tab.
Are there any storage limitations for the documents that I store in PipelineDeals.com?
No, you can upload any number of documents that you like for your deals.
How do I find my deals?
Just use the deals directory on the left part of the screen. All of the deals that you have access to will show up in the deal directory. The deals directory allows you to quickly search for any deal by typing the deal name in the search box.
In addition, you can quickly find recent deals, archived deals, my deals and deals not updated in 30 days by clicking on the appropriate links. Deals not updated in 30 days is your way to find those business opportunities that are getting neglected and need some attention.
How do I quickly find my own deals versus those of my team?
The My deals feature allows you to quickly pull a list of deals that belong to you. PipelineDeals will show you all the deals that you have visibility to by default. For example, the deals page will display all of your team’s deals in the deal directory.
How do I find who owns a deal?
If you bring up a deal that doesn’t belong to you but someone on your team, you will see the deal owner clearly marked in the upper right of the deal page for that specific deal. You can also filter your My Pipeline report in the reports by the owner field.
What is deal archiving?
For any business, sales leads and deals generally go through various stages of activity. Sometimes a deal is very active, other times it goes dormant for months, then springs back to life, other times it just dies. That is the nature of the selling in any business.
Deal archiving allows you to make a deal inactive in your deal directory. The deal will no longer show up in your Pipeline reports as well. Note: only deal owners can archive a deal.
Archived deals allow you to focus on your most active deals. They also allow you bring the deal back to life at a later point.
What can I do with an archived deal?
Archived deals can only be viewed and not edited.
How do I archive a deal?
Just click on the deal archive button at the top of the deal page on the upper right. You can then view a simple list of archived deals in the Deal Directory.
Can I de-archive a deal?
Yes, absolutely. Just click on the de-archive deal button on the deal page.
What is deal sharing?
Deal sharing is the ability to share and collaborate on a deal with one of your coworkers or colleagues.
What are the benefits of deal sharing?
Many deals are not just worked by one person. They are worked by a team of people across departments collaborating to push the deal across the finish line and get the sale.
Deal sharing allows you to share all the deal information - deal summary, your to-do lists, documents, files, links, people and notes for a specific deal and truly collaborate with another coworker to improve your sales productivity and get the sale closed faster.
Deal sharing also allows you to easily get a new person up to speed quickly on an account or deal. You can easily allow your coworker to review your historical documents created - (e.g. sales pitches, sales proposals), and files uploaded in Pipeline using deal sharing.
How does it work? Click on the share deal button at the top of a deal in the deal notebook. Enter a user’s email address. An email will be sent letting the user know that you have shared a deal with them. They just login to Pipeline and can see and edit the deal information. A shared deal is denoted with a small yellow flag in your deal notebook and deal directory.
Can a user delete or archive a deal?
No only the deal owner can delete and archive the deal. The person who you shared the deal with (the sharee) can see and edit all information.
Can I share a deal with someone who does not have a PipelineDeals account?
No, deals can only be shared with PipelineDeals users right now.
Do shared deals show up in the Pipeline Reports?
Yes, if your deal is shared with a coworker, it will show up in their Pipeline Report and be noted with the small yellow flag.
Can I unshare a deal?
Yes, unsharing a deal will remove the shared deal from the deal directory of the sharee.