Introduction:

Scope and Benefits:

• Replicate your business process, online: With Blueprint in Zoho CRM, you can replicate your entire business process, online.
• You can build your entire process from scratch in a simple drag-and-drop interface.
• In a blueprint, you can have a series of stages. You can decide and configure who should own each stage of the sales process.
• In a sales process, a sales rep follows a series of steps at each stage in the sales pipeline. With Blueprint in Zoho CRM, you can configure what can be done at each stage. For example, we can determine who owns that stage, can facilitate field updates, take notes, and once a particular action is completed, we can also automate sending emails, creating tasks, adding tags etc.
• A blueprint is built to adapt to any kind of business. This set of extensive options is built to cater to every business/sales process that is different, and unique. You can have a travel business, real-estate business, a financial organisation, be it anything, a blueprint is for all of you.
• In a Blueprint you get to decide when a lead/deal can move from one stage to another: A sales manager can verbally inform a sales rep, 'make sure you get x,y,z details from the lead before he is qualified'. This is translated into the CRM software in the form of criteria in Blueprint. Only when the criteria are fulfilled will the lead move to the next stage.
• Send emails, create tasks, update fields, or call any custom function after each stage. For example, if the lead is in the negotiation stage, then it's a requirement that we send the quotation to the lead. We can automate this via Blueprint. When a lead is moving from one stage to another, we can configure these bunch of automatic actions easily.
• Give detailed instructions on what happens at each stage. A blueprint can also act as a guide to the sales reps. When an Admin configures the Blueprint, they can elaborately give instructions on what happens at each stage and when a lead will move from one stage to the next. A new salesperson joins your team and even though he is trained in the process, having a clear set of instructions written will act as a guide for him to avoid back-and-forth discussions with the sales manager and focus on the task at hand.
• It will aid in monitoring every step of your business process. A sales manager can check the system and understand how the sales reps are handling every lead and also keep a check on the process without actually having to have offline meetings to understand where things went wrong.
• By allowing sales managers to monitor the process seamlessly and acting as a guide to the sales reps, Blueprint boosts the productivity of the employees and thereby increasing the overall business process.
• Once your blueprints are up and running, Zoho CRM will allow you to analyse and understand how your Blueprint has performed in the form of Blueprint usage reports. With this, you can understand the overall performance of these blueprints, the total number of records that have passed through a blueprint, the average time spent on a blueprint etc. Apart from that, you can also create custom reports from the reports module based on any of your active blueprints (s).
• When you create a blueprint for the leads module in Zoho CRM, you will have the option to automatically convert leads directly to contacts and deals when a particular stage is reached. Say, once the lead has moved passed the negotiation stage, we can simply check the built-in  Convert function and the lead will be converted to a contact and a deal saving a lot of manual work.
• You can also set a certain time limit on how long a lead can be in a particular stage. This is to ensure that the sales funnel keeps moving. If the lead is stagnant for a longer period, you can escalate it, give the lead more attention or term the lead as junk and move on.
• Save the information partially, come back and fill up the rest. You may have a set of criteria for a lead to move from one stage to the next like filling up a few mandatory fields. If the sales rep has only part information, he/she can fill in the details available at that time, Save it as a draft and come back for it later when you have the remaining information. This way, we don't have to start over every time we follow up with the lead/deal.
• You will also have an option to add validation rules for each field information obtained in a transition. If you have a set of mandatory fields requirements at a particular stage and have some criteria for it, we can create the validation rules within the blueprint itself.

 Building blocks of Blueprint - How does it work? 

• States and Transitions
• Transitions - Before, During, After

States and Transitions:

Transitions:

• We have to define who is the person responsible to implement the transition.  For example, we can mention that the record owner can carry this out.
• We also have to define the condition upon which this transition will be available to the records in the sales process. For example, only when the Lead stage is Prospecting, this transition should be shown. You can skip this step if it's not suitable for your business.

• Sending an email to the lead-containing information about their interaction and what they can expect as a next step.
• Assigning a task to the record owner to schedule a follow-up meeting with them to discuss the consequent stages.

Use cases:

1. Blueprint in a Real estate industry - Lead qualification process:

 

In the Introduction email sent transition, you can see below how can email is scheduled to be sent: