Sales Stage for abandoned opportunities

Hi all,

My sales teams would like a new Sales Stage of "Abandoned" to be available for opportunities and revenue line items.  This would allow them to capture an "opportunity" that may have been just a conversation that didn't eventuate into a real opportunity.  They don't like marking these as Closed Lost because a proposal was never really discussed.

I realise there is some complexity here.  The Abandoned stage would need to be linked to the Opportunity Status, although I would prefer that to also say something like Abandoned.  This may have an impact on the forecasting functions.

Any suggestions would be welcome?  How are your teams treating abandoned opportunities?

Regards,

Dave Hodgman

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  • Hi Dave,

    We use a sales stage of "other", then a sub-sales stage of "abandoned". We actually have two different sub-sales stages, "abandoned by customer" and "abandoned by us". Our definition for "abandoned by customer" is that it was an opportunity (or hint of an opportunity) where the customer didn't pursue anything. They didn't go with a competitor or didn't go with us. Maybe they lost funding, lost interest, etc. "Abandoned by us" is used when we pull out for some reason, we don't have a solution for their issue, we don't think we will win at all, etc. Anything with the "other" sales stage is set as status "closed" so it is removed from the funnel, but of course can still be reported on,etc.

  • Hi Ben,

    Thanks for your reply.  I don't believe manually adding a new sales stage is a viable approach as this would not work with the hardwired forecasting and funnel-graphs functions.  This is the advice I've received anyway.  Perhaps I am wrong.

    Regards,

    Dave.

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