Skip to Content

Advanced CRM

À l'issue de ce chapitre

  • distribute deals automatically between teams and salespeople;
  • feed the pipeline through enrichment and prospecting;
  • adapt sales follow-up to your own qualification criteria;
  • build the analyses that actually steer the business.

Day-to-day use of the CRM is covered in chapitre 7. This chapter deals with the settings that automate the distribution of work, feed the pipeline and refine the analysis. They are aimed at the sales manager and at the database administrator.

Distributing deals automatically

Rather than assigning each lead by hand, Odoo can route it to the right team and then to the right salesperson, according to written rules.

Enabling the mechanism

Automatic assignment is first set at app level, once and for all.

  1. Open CRM › Configuration › Settings.
  2. Tick Rule-Based Assignment.
  3. Choose how it is triggered: - Manually: assignment only runs on request, through a button on the team record; - Repeatedly: a scheduled job re-runs it at regular intervals, set by Repeat every.
  4. Save.

Astuce

Start with Manually. You test your rules by triggering assignment whenever you want, and you see the result before it happens again on its own. Switching to automatic comes once the domains have settled.

Routing leads to the right team

  1. Open CRM › Configuration › Sales Teams and select the team.
  2. In the Assignment Rules block, expand the Domain field.
  3. Click Add condition and build the criteria a lead must meet to be assigned to that team: country, industry, source, expected revenue, tags.
  4. Save.

Astuce

The counter shown next to the domain (n record(s)) indicates how many leads match at that moment. It updates with every change: use it to test your criteria before saving, rather than discovering the result afterwards.

An information line reminds you where the team stands: n leads assigned this month on a maximum of N. The ceiling is the sum of the capacities of its members.

Triggering the assignment is done with the Assign Leads button, at the top of the team record. Odoo asks for confirmation, then distributes leads between the members according to their capacities and their own domains.

Note

This button only appears if rule-based assignment is active and if the team handles leads or opportunities. It remains available even in Repeatedly mode, which lets you re-run the assignment without waiting for the next scheduled pass.

Note

The Skip auto assignment checkbox takes the team out of the mechanism without erasing its domain. That is the setting to use to suspend a team temporarily (holidays, reorganisation) rather than clearing its criteria. It only appears in Repeatedly mode, since manual mode has nothing to suspend.

Distributing between salespeople

  1. From the same team, open the Members tab.
  2. Open the record of each salesperson and fill in: - the Capacity, which caps what will be assigned to them; - a Lead Assignment Filter of their own, if their scope is narrower than the team's.
  3. Save.

Each member then appears on a card carrying a Leads (30 days) gauge, which shows their workload against their capacity at a glance.

Note

Capacity is understood over a rolling thirty days, not per run. A salesperson set to thirty leads will not receive thirty on every pass of the scheduled job, but thirty in total over the month.

Astuce

The Pause assignment checkbox removes a salesperson from the distribution without taking them out of the team: their open deals stay with them, they simply stop receiving anything new. That is the right move for an absence.

Assignment rules of a sales team
Figure 8.1 : Assignment rules of a sales team

Examples of rules

  • Leads from the industrial sector to the key accounts team.
  • Leads located in northern France to the salesperson for that region.
  • Leads coming from the website form to the team in charge of the web.
  • Leads whose expected revenue exceeds a threshold to the sales manager.

Point d'attention

The domains of the different teams must not overlap. Two rules that overlap assign the lead to the first team evaluated, which produces assignments that are hard to explain to the salespeople concerned.

Feeding the pipeline

Enriching records automatically

From the domain of the professional email address, Odoo completes the record: company name, postal address, industry, headcount, logo.

  1. Open CRM › Configuration › Settings.
  2. Enable Lead Enrichment.
  3. Choose the trigger: automatic on every new lead, or manual.
  4. Save.

In manual mode, open a lead and click Enrich.

Prospecting for new contacts

  1. Open CRM › Configuration › Settings and enable Lead Mining.
  2. Open CRM › Leads and click Generate Leads.
  3. In the Lead Mining Request, set the criteria: country, industry, company size, number of leads wanted.
  4. Choose whether to obtain companies alone or companies with their contacts.
  5. Fill in the team, the salesperson and the tags to apply to the leads created.
  6. Confirm.

Note

Enrichment and prospecting consume service credits billed separately from the Odoo subscription. The counters can be consulted from the settings.

Scoring leads automatically

Predictive scoring computes a probability of success from past deals, comparing the characteristics of the lead (country, industry, source, tags, language) with those of won and lost deals.

It is always on: there is nothing to tick. The Predictive Lead Scoring block in the settings merely displays the criteria used and the start date of the history.

Adjusting the computation.

  1. Open CRM › Configuration › Settings.
  2. In the Predictive Lead Scoring block, click Update Probabilities.
  3. Add or remove the fields to be taken into account: State, Country, Phone Quality, Email Quality, Source, Language, Tags.
  4. Set the date in Consider leads created as of the.
  5. Click Update.

The computed probability feeds the Probability field of every opportunity, and therefore the forecasts.

Note

Stage is always part of the computation and cannot be removed from it: it is the foundation of the scoring. The other fields refine it. Removing a criterion that makes no sense in your business (language, if you only work in France) makes the model sharper.

Note

The button re-runs the computation over all of the history considered. It only rewrites the probability of opportunities that were still following the automatic value: a probability entered by hand is left as it is.

Point d'attention

Scoring requires a history that is both long enough and, above all, properly filled in. If lost reasons have never been entered, the model learns from incomplete data and produces misleading probabilities. One year of properly kept history is a reasonable minimum.

Note

Entering a probability by hand on an opportunity switches off the automatic computation for that deal. The salesperson therefore keeps control over what they know better than the model.

Customising the follow-up

Adding fields

Some qualification information is specific to your business: available budget, decision deadline, competitor in the running, product of interest.

  1. Open an opportunity.
  2. Click the Studio icon in the top bar (see chapitre 23).
  3. Drag the field type you want to the place you want it.
  4. Name the field and set its properties.
  5. Save and leave Studio.

The field then becomes available as a filter criterion, a grouping criterion and an assignment rule criterion.

Note

Studio belongs to the Enterprise edition and installing it has a pricing impact (see chapitre 23). Without Studio, a property field can meet a one-off need (see section 4.4).

Email templates

  1. Write a message from an opportunity and get it right.
  2. Before sending, save the content as a template from the options of the composer window.
  3. The template is then offered on every send from an opportunity.

Templates accept dynamic fields (contact name, company, deal amount, salesperson) replaced automatically when the message is sent.

Automating follow-ups

The general mechanism of automated actions is described in chapitre 21. Applied to the CRM, it lets you, among other things:

  • create a follow-up activity three days after a quotation is sent;
  • notify the manager when a high-stakes deal has had no activity for a week;
  • send an introductory email to newly qualified leads;
  • raise an alert when an opportunity goes past its expected closing date.

Astuce

Automation should lighten the salespeople's work, not replace it. Automate reminders and repetitive tasks; keep human contact for the steps that decide the deal.

Analysing in depth

Won / lost analysis

  1. Open CRM › Reporting › Pipeline.
  2. Filter on the deals closed during the period.
  3. Group by lost reason, then by salesperson or by source.

This reading answers three distinct questions: are we losing on price, on lead time or on scope? Are we losing more on certain sources of business? Are we losing at a specific stage of the cycle?

Steering indicators

Indicator What it tells you
Conversion rate by stage Pinpoints the stage where deals stall.
Average cycle duration Measures the time between creation and closing.
Average deal value Directs sales effort towards the profitable segments.
Number of activities per salesperson Distinguishes a thin pipeline from a lack of activity.
Breakdown of lost reasons Feeds pricing and product decisions.

Saved reports

An analysis you have got right can be kept in Favorites and shared with the team. A weekly sales meeting is better served by two or three stable reports, consulted at every session, than by analyses rebuilt from scratch each time.

Connecting the CRM to the other apps

  • Sales: the quotation created from the opportunity keeps the link with the deal it came from.
  • Project: a won deal can give rise to the creation of an implementation project.
  • Calendar: meetings scheduled from an opportunity feed the agenda.
  • Email: messages received at the team address create or feed leads.
  • Accounting: the customer's outstanding balance and payment delays can be consulted from their record.

Good practice

Configure without over-complicating

  • Write down the sales process before configuring the pipeline, not the other way round.
  • Stick to five or six stages, using tags to distinguish cases if need be.
  • Standardise the information expected at each stage, and ask only for what is actually used.
  • Train the teams on the basic moves rather than on the full range of features.
  • Periodically clear dormant deals out of the pipeline: they distort every indicator.