Create an Opportunity record in Business Contact Manager

You can create an Opportunity record (Opportunity record: The location for storing Opportunity information, including information that is entered on the Opportunity form, linked records, and communication history items.) to help you better organize, manage, and track important details about your Opportunity, including sales stage, potential value, customer (customer: A person or company to whom your company sells products or services.) interactions, and estimated close date (close date: The date on which an Opportunity is closed, either because it resulted in a sale or was unsuccessful.). You can also link communication history items (communication history item: An item such as an appointment, business note, e-mail message, file, or task that is linked to an Account, Business Contact, Opportunity, or Business Project.) and add custom details, by using user-defined fields (user-defined field: A field that you can create and define to track information specific to your business.) and editing the lists for certain fields.

1. On the Business Contact Manager menu, click Opportunities.
2. On the Standard toolbar (Standard toolbar: A toolbar that performs some of the most common tasks in a Microsoft Office application, such as opening, saving, and printing files.), click the New button.
3. Complete the Opportunity form by using the General, Details, History, or the User-Defined Fields views.

 Note   You can customize your Opportunity forms to add information that is specific to your business by creating User-defined fields (user-defined field: A field that you can create and define to track information specific to your business.), or editing the lists. User-defined fields are only available if you or one of your team members, have customized this form.

For assistance with completing the form, click the Help   button.

4. On the Ribbon (ribbon: An element that replaces most menus, toolbars, and task panes. The ribbon features task-based tabs that contain tools and options organized into logical groups.), in the Actions group, click Save & Close.

Add information about prospects to Opportunity records

To keep track of the products or services and other terms that you've shared with potential customers, add the information about the sales stage and payment terms to the Opportunity record. Then, you can list your Opportunities by sales stage to see which customers you want to follow up with. You can also view the information on the Business Contact Manager Home page, or create a report to print the information or export the data to Excel*.

Specify sale

s stage and payment terms

1. On the Business Contact Manager menu, click Opportunities.
2. Create or open an Opportunity record by doing one of the following:
• To create a new Opportunity record, on the Standard toolbar, click New.
• To open an Opportunity record, double-click the record.
3. For a new record, do the following:
• Type a name for the Opportunity in the Opportunity title field.
• Click the Link To button, and then click the Account or Business Contact to link to the Opportunity. For more information about how to link an Account or Business Contact to an Opportunity, see About linking records and items to an Opportunity record in Business Contact Manager.

Opportunity title and Link To are mandatory fields on the Opportunity form.

4. If necessary, in the Status section, in the Sale stage list, click Proposal/Price Quote.
5. In the Terms section, in the Payment terms list, click the payment terms that you quoted to the prospective customer. Or, click Edit this list to add a custom term to the list.
6. In the Products and services section, click one of the following buttons:
• Add to add a new item to the list.
• Edit to make changes to information about a selected item.
• Remove to delete an item from the list.

For assistance with completing the Add or Edit dialog boxes, click the Help button on the dialog box.

7. If you want to, add information to the other fields on the form.

Viewing information about prospects

There are a variety of ways to view information about Opportunities, including the Opportunities that are at the Proposal/Price Quote sales stage. For more information about how to view your list of Opportunities the way you want, see the following topics:

• About the Business Contact Manager Home page. In the Add or Remove Content dialog box, select Open Opportunities . To sort the Opportunities by the Proposal/Price Quote sales stage, click the Sales Stage column, and then scroll to the Proposal/Price Quote Opportunities.

 Tip   To display the payment terms column, customize the Open Opportunities List view. In the Show Fields dialog box, click User-defined fields in folder, click PaymentTerms, and then click Add. For more information about adding a column, see Add a column.

• About views in Business Contact Manager. In the Folder List, click Opportunities. On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click By Sales Stage.

 Tip   To display the payment terms column, customize the Open Opportunities List view. In the Show Fields dialog box, click User-defined fields in folder, click PaymentTerms, and then click Add. For more information about adding a column, see Add a column.

• About Business Contact Manager reports. Display the Opportunity Funnel report. Opportunities are grouped by sales stage on the report.

 Tip   To display the Payment Terms column, click Modify Report. In the Modify Report pane, click Columns. Under Columns, click Basic Columns, and then click Payment Terms.

*The stand-alone edition of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager can be used with Excel 2007 or Excel 2003.