Hi,

I am trying to get this Deals working right.
In the video example of Deals, categories contain kind of services (Print, UI, consultancy)
I tried this but can’t find the added value in this approach for a design company (unless you want to analyse).

If I really go to the main goal of DEALS is to win them. (at least for me :-)
So, this leads me to the funnel technique.
I would like to do it like this: find contact info, send mail/letter, follow up call, meeting, make proposal, present proposal, etc…...
In that way I can filter the kind of task and work more grouped/efficiently

Who agrees on this approach?
If you use this approach what steps do you have?
What are other ways of using categories?

Thanks

I would like to use the funnel approach I use in salesforce which is similar to the one you describe but I am using categories to show the completion date of each project instead as I need to be able to produce a sales pipeline.

having a date filter added would allow me to use categories properly.

In my testing I’ve ended up using categories for closure date

This week
This month
1 month plus etc

It kind of works but the filtering is still the issue.

Expected closing date and forecasting now possible on Deals!

We have justed launched a new analytics add-on that I believe solves this issues.

• Get overview of sales and forecast by month – for all sales people, for a sales person, or by product category
• Sort and filter a deals list by sales rep, closing data, status, value, category, etc.

Try the app on your own Highrise data here: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1232017802730

We are very interested in getting your feedback on this.

Rasmus
Co-founder
www.youcalc.com

Looks good rasmusaaen…any way of getting ‘Company Name’ in there?

Yes, we could add Deal names.

But it would make the report load much slower.

The issue is that the HR API does not return company names with the deals list, only account IDs. So in order to get company names we would have to perform an additional API call to retrieve all company contacts, and then match the account IDs with that list to generate deal names. If you have e.g. a thousand company contacts in your HR, the report would load much slower.

But if a lot of HR users are interested in this feature, we can add it – keep your comments coming!

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand Reporting & Analytics

I could live with that!

We have a very simple template that we use -

Customer / Description / Order Value / Probability / Forecast closure date / Notes

I think forecasting can be made a lot more complicated (SalesForce!) but you end up having your people feed the system rather than actually selling.

thanks!

How about a closing date within the month; e.g. 10 feb 2009

richallum
Yes, we could implement closing dates with day specification pretty easily.
That would allow you to sort the deals list more precisely.
I assume the charts could remain as they are, i.e. with forecasting on a monthly basis?

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand Reporting & Analytics Dashboards

marcboxer

I will look into how much it would take us to implement deal names in the report. (Its a bit tedious the way the HR API works – not like a good old database where you can join, etc.)

You also mention “Probability”. We could probably add probability or stage to the deal name as well, and then allow for some real pipeline/funnel analytics. We’ll end up with some really long deal names though – would be much nicer if 37S implemented a stage or probability field.

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand Reporting & Analytics Dashboards

Thanks rasmusaaen

We’re very course with probabilities 25%, 50% or 75% – my opinion is that any sales person or system that believes that they can forecast any tighter than that is pissing in the wind!

Hi rasmusaaen

Charts are fine as they are.

—
Regards

Richard

Hi rasmusaaen

We’ve been playing with the reports and like them but I think the main problem is that the way that Deals deals with it’s fields don’t work for us (I understand that we may work differently to everyone else).

As you enter a new ‘Deal’ in HR -

‘Who is the deal with?’ – The name, works for us but the Highrise page only shows the contact not the contact and company, we need both. Youcalc doesn’t show either.

“Name the deal’ – Here we put a couple of words to describe the deal. This is as much as we need

‘Describe the deal’ – we don’t use this field. Sales forecasts are not essays. Youcalc doesn’t show this field. Fine by us!

‘Category’ – we’re using this to enter the supplier of the goods. Works well in Youcalc

Youcalc Notes

1. Would like to see sales persons name in the report if ‘show all’ users is selected. Also your drop down shows the user ID rather than the name which isn’t helpful.
2. Would it be possible to show the whole table without scroll bars? Right now it doesn’t print well and our sales meetings still seem to need paper!
3. Would it be possible to include and export to excel option?
4. Really need to see end user name and company above all else!
5. Closure date works well….(would be nice to see this as a field in HR of course)

I know this is a free tool right now but we’d certainly be willing to pay a modest fee for the functionality.

thanks for the time

marcboxer, richallum, JPB

We just upgraded our deals analytics app, and I think it now offers most of what you guys have requested:
- Stages on deals have been implemented, allowing you to make a weighted sales forecast.
- Closing date allows you to set a specific date instead of just a month.
- Date interval can be selected down to a single month.
- Company names have been included in list (in addition to deal name) and if you click on a deal or company it opens in Highrise

It is pretty close to a full blow funnel / pipeline / opportunity manager with built in forecasting, plus you can do the most common reporting tasks.

We are still fine tuning it, but if you have any major comments please let me know.

Try the app here: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1232017802730

Rasmus Madsen
www.youcalc.com
Reporting and analytics on-demand

rasmusaaen – it looks great!

A few minor issues some of the users and some of the companies are shown as id numbers rather than name (can’t work out a pattern and I am admin)

I’m going to go an play now

Thanks for listening!!!

marcboxer

The issues should be fixed now.
If you sign in to the app as a non-admin, you will always get user IDs instead of user names. It is a silly restriction in the HR API, which prevents non admins from retrieving user names of other users. If you sign in as admin you will get proper user names.

The app has been updated here: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1232017802730

I hope this solves your needs – keep the good input coming.

Rasmus Madsen
www.youcalc.com
On-demand reporting and analytics

I’ve been using the pipeline technique. I have several categories and they are each steps along the way to closing a deal. Its a bit clumsy, and its tough to move deals around quickly ( you have to do them one at time), but its better than using Salesforce.

evbart

I assume what you do is you use the categories in deals to specify stages in your pipeline/funnel?
We thought about using the categories field for setting stage, but it seems that the categories field is more commonly used to specify product/service category for a deal (maybe this assumption is incorrect!?)

So we decided to add stage to the deal name instead, allowing you to set both product/service category and stage for each deal. Ideally, 37S would add a ””Stage” field to deals (in addition to category) – that would make the whole thing easier.

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand reporting and analytics

Sales targets/quota now added to the Highrise deals analyzer app!

Setting targets and measuring your sales and pipeline against targets is fundamental to most sales organizations. We’ve therefore added a targets/quota feature to our deals pipeline analyzer.

Highrise does not allow you to set sales targets, but our app can retrieve your sales targets from a Google spreadsheet, and include them in the “Sales & Pipeline vs. Target”-chart.

You can set monthly sales targets for each user, and split it by deal category, so that each user has a sales target per deal category per month. Or you can simply enter a total monthly target for each user.

Try the app here: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1232017802730 – there is a full documentation on how to set up a Google spreadsheet with your sales targets.

Let me know what you think of this.

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand reporting and analytics

Thank you all for sharing your category naming.

@Rasmus, I am bit irritated by your amount of energy you show to report on the features/status of your application in THIS message.
16 links to your app, isn’t that a bit overdoing it?
My question was “What categories do you use in Deals?”
Not “What app do you use with Deals?
Maybe you could create a specific message to report, then I don’t need to create another one with the same question.

So if people want to still share there category naming, please do, I am very interested.

@JPB

I see what you mean. Reviewing the thread I realize that it has changed focus since you created it, and I take reponsibility for that. I initially responded to two other messages – re. adding funnel stages and closing dates to deal names – by announcing that our Deals app used exactly that deals naming approach to create a pipeline analysis. From there, the thread developed into a dialog between me and other forum users on features of our deals app.

I have no intent of “taking over” your thread – I suggest that users who are interesting in discussing youcalc apps post their messages in this thread: http://forum.37signals.com/highrise/forums/13/topics/10078

As for my many links to youcalc – yes, I make an effort for two reasons. 1) Full disclosure, I believe forum users should know who I am. 2) I have founded and thus live and breath youcalc, and I take every opportunity to promote it, if it can be done in respect of the context. I have deep respect for users like yourself who spend lots of time helping out other HR users for purely non-commercial reasons, and I am making an effort not to spam or manipulate the forum with my commercial interests. My apologies if I did not succeed in this forum thread.

All best

Rasmus
CEO/founder
www.youcalc.com
On-demand reporting and analytics

Ok rasmusaaen no harm done but I will punish you ;-)

With your experience what categories would you advise me to create in Highrise, so not your add -on app?
I like to keep things easy.

So, your advise would be more then welcome !
Thank you !

JP

@JPB

I think probability is the number one dimension to add to deals – even a “stage 1 in your funnel”-deal could have a 75% probability, so probabilities are more important than stages, next steps, etc. Focus your efforts on those deals that have high probability, obviously.

Without knowing a lot about your needs, I therefore suggest probability as name prefix, e.g. “90% – logo design job”, “75% – new corporate identity”. This would allow you to get an easy overview of which deals are close to closing, and then you can focus your efforts on those.

If your sales guys have a hard time estimating probability, you could opt for a stage approach. Identify which steps have to have been taken and which reaction has to have occurred from a prospect, before you can qualify a deal as stage 1, 2, 3, etc. (stick to max 5 stages). Then ask you sales guys to estimate not the probability but instead which stage a deal is in and add that ad prefix to the deal names, e.g. “3 – design job”, “4 – new corporate identity). If your users manage to estimate stages, then you should be able to relate each stage to a probability.

I would stick to “product/service” categories for the category field, but if you don’t have any product/service categories, then you could alternatively use the category field as “stage/probability” indicator.

Finally, find a way to identify stalled leads. A 90% prob deal is probably no longer 90% if it has been stalled for 6 months – make sure you regularly find and clean up stalled deals. You need not only pipeline volume but also pipeline speed/flow. Knowing when a deal moved from one stage to the current stage is crucial – unfortunately HR does not contain stages nor a stage history/log, so you would have to find another way of identifying stalled leads – maybe using some last action date.

Hope this is valuable!

Rasmus
www.youcalc.com
On-demand reporting and analytics