It would seem fundamental that you would be able to put a column into the “Open Opportunities” List/Table showing who the Client is for a particular opportunity. But I can’t see how to do that - it’s not a selectable option when you are adding columns. I’ve spoke with an InfusionSoft Consultant, who tells me it can’t be done. This seems to be a glaring problem?
Picking up this thread, is this truly correct?? I contacted InfusionSoft support today and they seemed a bit vague on this issue. Surely I can’t be the only person who seems prospects as being of interest because they work for a particular company. The opportunity is inked to the company not the individual. The opportunity ceases if the person leaves the company. What is going on with this. I’m considering dumping my subscription on this alone.
@Peter_Harden, Opportunities are contact-centric by design, not the company unfortunately. What you can do is to use the contact record as the company and use the email for the individual who is the point person for the opportunity. Or you can name the Opportunity with the company name and use the First Name and Last Name of the person receiving emails related to the email. If that person is replaced, just update the Name and Email data in the existing record.
Thanks so much for your reply Cheryl. But I already have all the companies in the system, together with their contact details. These are already linked to contacts in many cases: often to multiple contacts. I will lose all the benefits of those linkages I think if I correctly understand your solution. I am thinking that maybe I just tag the companies and then get reps to change the tag according to the status. That way my tags manage my pipeline. Do you think that might work? I honestly cant believe how crap and clunky InfusionSoft’s solution is in this respect.
I’m sorry, @Peter_Harden - but linking an Opportunity to a Company record just won’t work unfortunately. The company record can still be linked to the contact…but a contact record will need to be the record associated with the Opportunity.
Were you given information prior to setup that Opportunities could be assigned to company records?
Prior information - I can’t honestly say I was told this specific. I think the sell was more that InfusionSoft was more than capable of handling all my CRM needs. I run a business selling listings linked to companies on my website. So I have invested a reasonable amount of time now with the API linking my online database to InfusionSoft so that Companies are mirrored on both systems. But how do I give my reps a list of relevant companies and say “go sell”??? I can tag them I suppose. Is that the best I can do?
Things happen so don’t feel bad. There is a lot of great training in the Help center on Opportunities so going through those will help going forward. You can definitely give your reps a list of companies, but your flow will need to include new Opportunities linked to a contact record.
I only feel bad in that I think I may have picked the wrong software. I don’t see how you can be a serious B2B marketing tool if you don’t allow people to add opportunities to companies?
You can add opportunities to company records. That’s not the real issue. In campaign builder, you don’t have a complete set of merge fields available on the company level so the most you can hope for is to manually mange those opportunities on the company records. So, for example, you would not be able the use merge fields in an email that are company specific if you wanted to send an email in response to a stage move. This is where the limitation really lies.
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I’ve got to agree with Peter Harden here. I’ve been asking InfusionSoft the same question. It seems to me - a major short-coming, that an Opportunity cannot be associated to a Company.
The CRM is after-all a simple data-base, it doesn’t make sense to me that an Opportunity can’t at very least be associated with a Company. (Even if it is a secondary association, after the Contact association)
Frequently - I have multiple proposals out to multiple contacts, at different locations, at the same Company - and it would be nice to be able to go to one place (i.e. one Company) to see all of those opportunities collectively - or for the Opportunities list to be sorted by Company - rather than by an obscure persons name. (Frequently - my proposal may be directed at 4 or 5 people at the Company and I have do decide which single person I’m going to designate as the Opportunity customer)
So I see that if I go into a specific Company, click on the “other” tab, then scroll down to the bottom of the page - I do have the ability to associate an Opportunity with a Company. But thereafter - there is no useful functionality;
- The Opportunity Search page does not allow you to search opportunities by Company
- The Opportunity Search Output does not allow you to add a column/field for Company
- There’s no way to sort Opportunities by Company
- There’s no data field for Company in the Opportunities, Opportunity Tab Page
- When you go to a Contact page, there are two fields where you can enter Company - one seems to be free-text, the other requires you to search for previously entered companies - what’s the reasoning for this?
That’s all correct, @Mark_Waller. Technically you can assign an Opportunity to a Company but as we’ve mentioned, unfortunately there isn’t any real functionality regarding automated followup, saving searches on Dashboard, etc.
Correct. That is why we’ve made these distinctions. When you go to a company record, you can manage the opportunity manually on that level but beyond that it isn’t well supported in things like campaign builder (although i think the stage move goal would still work but not really useful still).
As to the two company fields, the text one allows you to specify a company name without actually assigning a company record. The other company field is specific to assigning by company record (if one exists). Our answer to that has been to write a script that automates the company creation and assign it to the contact as the company record but not everyone wants or needs that.