The sales cycle and its implementation in CRM
In our previous discussion, we looked at what Sales Force Automation is and how it helps businesses overcome obstacles in a sales process. The process of taking a customer through a sales cycle, right from acquisition to conversion and retention can be streamlined, and routine tasks such as sending emails, scheduling tasks, and updating fields can be automated using a CRM, so that you are more efficient and save time and effort. Now, let us specifically look at what a sales cycle is and how Zoho CRM is designed to implement it.
A sales cycle, by definition, is a customer's journey from acquisition to retention. From gathering prospects to engaging with them, and finally making the sale, the stages in the sales cycle vary between businesses.
Let us take the example of an electronics company. The company organises a trade show, and over 100 registered participants express interest in the company's products. After gathering data from these prospects, the company's sales reps send each of them an email thanking them for their interest, and offer them more information about their products and services. After initiating contact, the sales reps proceed based on each prospect's response and qualify them accordingly. The reps continue engaging with them until they close the deals—either won or lost.
This is a process any business is involved in. When you run this process using Zoho CRM, you need to understand how this application is designed for you to implement the sales cycle.
How is it implemented in Zoho CRM?
Before we get into the details of Zoho CRM's design for the sales cycle, we need to understand a few key terms. You will come across these terms numerous times in the product.
- A Lead in Zoho CRM, is any prospective customer who may be interested in your products or services. It could be anyone who has probably responded to your advertisements. They may be interested in your business, but you don't know for sure. You need to follow up to find out.
- During the follow-up process, you'll identify leads who continue to express interest in the company's products and services. You'll then convert them into Contacts and Accounts.
- A contact, in Zoho CRM, is basically a qualified lead—someone who is genuinely interested in doing business with you.
- An account, on the other hand, is the company or organisation that the contact belongs to. It's also worth mentioning that an account can be associated with multiple contacts.
- After conversion, you will continue engaging with your contacts, as further nurturing and follow-ups are likely to result in business opportunities, or Deals. A deal, in Zoho CRM, refers to a business opportunity that you follow up on with a customer. Once you bag a deal, it goes through various stages in the sales process until it is closed—won or lost.
Now, let us understand this better with the example of the electronics company. A team of sales reps who attended the trade show gathered the contact details of 100 leads, and they were stored within the company's CRM account. The team of sales reps back at the office were then able to send out a "thank you for your interest" email to each lead.
- John Smith, one such prospect, from ABC Corp is added as a lead in CRM.
- As the sales reps followed up with John, they learn that John is very keen to buy one of their products. So they CONVERT John Smith from a raw lead to a qualified lead — that is, a contact.
- Upon conversion, John automatically gets added as a contact and ABC Corp gets added as his account in CRM. He is no longer a lead.
- On further follow-up, a deal may be associated to ABC Corp, as the sales rep opens business opportunities with John.
In short, a lead can be generated through a variety of sources and converted to contacts and accounts within Zoho CRM. When a business opportunity arises, it can be associated with these contacts and deals.
This is how Zoho CRM is designed to implement any sales cycle, overall. We have discussed the concept here. If you have any questions with the implementation, please add your questions as comments below. Feel free to suggest your favourite topics to be discussed in this CRM Admins Chat Room.
Access your files securely from anywhere
New to Zoho Recruit?
Zoho Developer Community
New to Zoho LandingPage?
Zoho LandingPage Resources
New to Zoho Survey?
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Bigin?
Topic Participants
Anna Sakhi John
Sticky Posts
How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.
Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity. We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbersFunction #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.
Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is justZoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas
<br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM
Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practicalCRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.
Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
Zoho CRM Plus Resources
Zoho Books Resources
Zoho Subscriptions Resources
Zoho Projects Resources
Zoho Sprints Resources
Qntrl Resources
Zoho Creator Resources
Zoho CRM Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
Zoho Show Resources
Get Started. Write Away!
Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.
Zoho CRM コンテンツ
-
オンラインヘルプ
-
Webセミナー
-
機能活用動画
-
よくある質問
-
Ebook
-
-
Zoho Campaigns
- Zoho サービスのWebセミナー
その他のサービス コンテンツ
Nederlandse Hulpbronnen
ご検討中の方
Recent Topics
A Question about Email Handling (Sending and Receiving)
Hello! I was looking into setting up Email Aliases for my domain that I purchased a while ago through Zoho Mail. I set up a singular alias already and have it linked with Gmail, and it seems to be working out well. However, I set up another alias today,Kaizen #201 - Answering Your Questions | Webhooks, Functions, and Schedules
Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series! We are incredibly grateful for all the feedback we received, and as promised, we will answer all the queries in this Kaizen series. Last week, in our 200th post, we addressed one of theZoho Projects Strict Dates for Tasks
Hi Zoho Projects team, I would love to see a feature to allow Strict Dates for Tasks. Sometimes in projects you have dates which must not move, even if predecessor Task dates change. For example, perhaps you need to book access to a facility to performNo Mark as filed buton in GSTR -3b
We are filing our GST in GST portal -and want to mark GST in Zoho books as filed. It is possible to mark GSTR 1 as filed through Mark as filed button. But there is no such button in GSTR-3B. How to mark corrosponding GSTR-3B as filed?ranking by drag the choices instead of rank by number
is the option of draging the choice is available instead of selecting the ranking number for each choice?TASKS - Dashboard to show ALL Tasks from ALL apps.
The Unified Tasks View is useless without the other main zoho apps (Desk, Books & even FSM now) We need to see all our tasks under on pane of glass. The Zoho developers are out of touch with real business workflows. So how it was designed they want usFunction #13: Transaction level profitability
In Zoho Books, the Profit & Loss report provides valuable insights into the overall profitability of your business, indicating whether you have made a profit or incurred a loss. However, there may be occasions when you wish to assess whether a specificZoho CRM with Sap Business One
I need information about integration CRM with Sap BO, thank.Allow bill to nest multiple projects
A bill (purchase) is more often than not used across multiple projects and this functionality is missing and very urgently needed for accurate reporting of purchases across projectsAmazon invoice in Zoho Books
I have just made my first few sales on Amazon India. Amazon Seller account generates invoices for the sales made on Amazon. These invoices are sent to customers also. Now when I was only making offline sales, I used to create Invoices in Zoho Book. NowHow can I change iOS display setting at night?
It seems like at night the two light daytime settings themes (white with blue on top or just white) are not available and I am forced to choose among a few other colours that I really don’t want, I.e., black, blue or orange. Is there a way for me to alwaysCelebrate WWW day with Zoho Desk
Let's recall the times when we learned 'WWW' stands for World Wide Web. Whether you like to call it wuh-wuh-wuh or double-u double-u double-u, or World Wide Web, we all owe a lot to this groundbreaking invention that reshaped how we connect, communicate,The power of camaraderie
In the days before the internet boom, conversations happened face-to-face or over the phone. Phone calls were precious; every minute counted, and every word mattered. We looked forward to those moments of real connection. Even today, nothing quite matchesMessage Content is missing/invalid fault
We cannot create a complete template over zoho. Some features - like button adding - is missing. The templates are created on Zoho and edited on Meta to solve the problem. But still then, some features cannot be used and the message returns this failureKönnen bereits gesendete Kampagnen im Nachhinein einer Mailing-Liste zugeordnet werden, ohne dass die Kampagne erneut versendet wird?
Wir haben unsere älteren Kampagnen in Campaigns über Kontaktkategorien versendet. Dann haben wir umgestellt auf Mailing-Listen, damit alte Kampagnen auch in einem Archiv aufgerufen werden können. Jetzt ist die Frage, ob die Kampagnen, die über die KategorieauswahlNewsletter Templates Are Not Mobile Responsive
Hi, I've already submitted this request to ZOHO once this morning, but for some reason your system logged me out, wouldn't accept my username/password login, and isn't showing any evidence that I've submitted this issue. So here we go again... I am under the impression that your newsletter templates are supposed to be mobile optimised: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/blog/responsive-email-marketing.html This is clearly not the case, as the last 2 newsletters I've created in Campaigns look perfectDigest Juillet - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, Zoom sur les nouveautés de juillet dernier au sein de Zoho Community France. Zoho Commerce vous propose une expérience améliorée grâce à sa nouvelle interface ergonomique et à ses fonctionnalités avancées, conçues pour faciliter100 Rows in a Subform is too limited
We have a custom Module in CRM called Price Sheets, when we get a PO from a client we add the items from the PO to it and then check with our vendors for pricing and add our margin etc And after it is complete we have setup custom scripts to create aUninstall unattended agent
Hello, I'm testing many use case before we purchase assist for our remote support. While we are testing what is the proper way to uninstall agent? I did uninstall from systray, from windows control panel but still ZohoURservice is running. How can I uninstall client side?Zoho Commerce Down?
Is anyone else's storefront down at the moment? Ours has been down for at lease an hour.Zoho Projects iOS app update: Dashboard widget on the home screen
Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce the 'Dashboard' widget in the latest version(v3.10.8) of the Zoho Projects iOS app. Dashboard widgets allow you to view the project progress visually without having to open the app. The widget enables you toIdea: Workflow Rule Trigger Only When Subform Row Is Updated (Thanks to New Inline Row Feature)
Hi Zoho team and community, With the recent update to Zoho CRM, we can now add or delete rows inside subforms without entering edit mode, using the inline Add row button. This is a fantastic improvement for user experience — seamless, fast, and efficient.Auto add new section based on document choices
Hi team, I'm wondering if the below is a possilibity within Zoho sign. We have an application process to become a customer of ours, we currently use Zoho Sign to manage this application and this works quite well. However, if the customer indicates 'YES'Change rate after xxxx kilometers
Is there a way to change the miileage rate after a certain mileage. After 5000 kilometers, we want the rate to automaticly change. Thank !Subform Entry Limit from a Subform Field (A different Subform on the same Form)
Hi, I would like to be able to use a Subform 1 Field as the Dynamic Entry Limit for Subform 2. Even better would be able to use some code with the values, so for example using the Subform 1 Qty Field as the Max Entry limit for Subform 2, BUT only theSlow Zobot response time
Hi, We launched the Zobot on our site to sit along with the regular Live Chat but had to take the Zobot down as the response time was very slow. The bot was slow to begin then once the chat had been initiated the response was very slow. The bot typinghow to show data of 3 table in pivot
Based on engineer name i want to get the data from 3 different tables like Service , amc, installation , but Every table contain Engineer name As Common , based that from the service table i want to take service amount , and count of service based onCustom Status for Purchase Orders
Currently Zoho books has functionality to create custom statuses for Sales Orders. Can this be extended to include custom status for purchase orders as well? It was a great decision to add this functionality to sales orders. Our use case is for trackingAsk the Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility
Hello everyone! The foundation is set. Build the beams. Raise the pillars. Set the walls. The Zoho Desk architecture stands tall. Let's discuss integration within Zoho Desk, extensions from the Marketplace, creating connections between Zoho Desk and otherIs there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even custom function across multiple departments?
Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even a custom function from one department to other departments, like it is done for field duplication from one department layout to other department layouts?Automated reply on any new ticket raised by customer
Hi ZohoDesk team, Can we set up an automation so that whenever a new ticket is created against our support email; ZohoDesk immediately sends our standard acknowledgement, including the expected TAT for resolution? If that’s possible, could you share theZoho equipment rental - just like Booqable
Hi Zoho Team, is it possible to create a module or a system like booqable? our business starts renting our IT equipment assets that have been recently used for Events and Projects, we are having ZOHO books so its easy to integrate if you create one. BooqableProfit Margin Scheme
I'm a tourism company operating in the aviation and outbound tourism sectors. Typically, taxes are 0% as our operations are outside the country. However, the state has now imposed a tax on the profit margin. This means if the selling price of an airlineVisibility and Enforcement for Outdated Plug Parameters in Zobot Canvas
Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, Greetings, We’d like to suggest an important usability and quality improvement for working with Plugs inside Zobot. Current Behavior: When we update the code of an existing Plug, any Zobot card using that Plug requires manual resaving.Announcement: Zoho DataPrep to Deprecate Password-Only Authentication for Snowflake Connections on July 31, 2025
As part of our ongoing commitment to security and in alignment with Snowflake's pledge to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Secure by Design initiative, Zoho DataPrep will no longer support single-factor password authentication.The same Contact associated to multiple Companies - Deals
Hi, I would like to know if there is an option to associate the same contact with multiple companies (two or more) deals, using the same contact details for all. This is because we have contacts who are linked to different companies or branches of theText on Zoho Sign confirmation dialouge is very small compared to text used everywhere else on Zoho Sign.
I've reported multiple times through Zoho's support email that the text on this notification is very small in contrast to all the other text on the Zoho Sign app. I think it's a bug and it just needs the font size to be increased. It's very minor butWise integration in Zoho Books
Hi, it is now time for zoho books to support Wise.com integration for payment links. Wise has launched credit card payments, now about 0.5% cheaper than Stripe. Also their bank payments are much much cheaper than credit cards. Its time for books teamError Message: None of the rows can be imported
I have been using zoho sheets to download my CSV file for about 2 years now, this month, October 2021, for some reason when I download it to upload to zoho books I get a message saying "None of the rows can be imported". I have been using the same process,Invalid Element place_of_contact, Invalid Element gst_no, Invalid Element gst_treatment
so this is the body contact_name: orderData.customerName, company_name: orderData.customerName, email: orderData.email, contact_type: 'customer', currency_code: 'INR', gst_treatment: 'business_gst', gst_no: 'i using proper gst no i just removed it fromNext Page