Opportunities

What it is#

Opportunities (at /opportunities) is where the firm works its pipeline. It is not the Directory's clients: a client has projects; an opportunity is work the firm hopes to win, for a prospect or for a client it already has.

For a firm with CORE's CRM module, the opportunities are CORE's, and everything done here is written to CORE. A firm without it starts an opportunity as a potential project in the project wizard (+ Add potential project); its stage, who it is assigned to, its follow-ups and win % are kept in COREboards. HubSpot deals, when HubSpot is connected, are shown read-only.

A potential project from the wizard is marked draft and lives in COREboards only. If your firm has CORE’s CRM and the work becomes real, Put in CORE’s CRM… files it there: CORE gets the opportunity with its client, value, win % and stage, its open follow-ups move across, and the wizard work you have already done becomes that opportunity’s estimate. The desk then shows one row, CORE’s.

Principals and firm admins hold the rail row; a firm admin can grant it to anyone in Settings → Users & Access. Hide $ masks every amount.

Home#

• Open pipeline: the weighted value (each value times its win %), with the full value and the count beside it. Win rate: won out of decided in the last twelve months. Follow-ups: due within a week, and overdue. Needs attention: the length of the queue below.
• What needs doing: follow-ups that are overdue or due within a week (Done ticks one off), opportunities whose target date has passed, and open ones with no activity in thirty days and nothing scheduled.
• Pipeline: every open opportunity grouped by stage. Show won and lost adds the closed ones. A row opens the opportunity.

One opportunity#

An opportunity opens in the side drawer. Name, stage, value, win %, target date, assigned to, type and next step can all be changed; Save to CORE writes them and reads them back. Expected start and Duration say when the work would run if it is won; CORE has no fields for them, so COREboards keeps them, and Revenue Forecasting's What-If spreads the fee across those months instead of guessing. Changing the win % here also clears any figure set for it in Revenue Forecasting's What-If, so the firm has one number.

Follow-ups and calls

Follow-up… schedules one: a date, the kind (CORE's list), who does it, and what to do. Done and Reopen tick it off. Log a call writes a note on the opportunity in CORE.

The estimate

Start the estimate… opens the project wizard with the opportunity's name, client, value, target date and the person it is assigned to filled in, for the phases, fees, schedule and team. It stays linked: the drawer shows its fee, Use as the value copies that fee onto the opportunity, and Open the estimate goes back to it. The wizard then shows Back to the opportunity at the top, which returns you to the desk with its drawer open. It is not counted as an opportunity of its own, on the desk or in Revenue Forecasting's What-If.

The proposal

Write a proposal… starts a letter to the client, ready to edit (a blank line starts a new paragraph), then the fee: by phase from the estimate when there is one, otherwise the opportunity's value. Each phase says how its fee is set: hourly (an estimate, or a not-to-exceed ceiling) or its share of the fixed fee, and when the fixed fee was calculated, the calculation is stated above the table (for example 12% of $3,000,000). The fee stands for adds how long the fee holds. It is laid out on your Invoice Designer template, so it matches your invoices. Preview PDF opens it; Save to CORE writes it to CORE's proposals on the opportunity, with the PDF attached, and lists it here with a link. You send it yourself. A firm without CORE's CRM downloads the PDF instead.

Won and lost

Won… moves it to CORE's won stage dated today and makes the prospect a client in CORE. Then Publish the project from the estimate (or Start the project… if there is no estimate yet) publishes the CORE project in the wizard. Lost… asks why, which is required, and optionally who it went to and a note; the reason is what the win-loss read depends on.

Adding one#

+ New opportunity asks who it is for — a client or prospect already in CORE, or a new prospect (added to CORE's CRM first). The picker searches as you type, and Add a new prospect at the top of its list switches to a new prospect with the name you typed. Then come the name, stage, type and target date CORE requires, and the value, win %, assigned to, next step, expected start (the month after the target date until you change it) and duration in months. A firm without CORE's CRM is sent to the project wizard instead.