Your company receives plenty of inquiries. Salespeople are busy, proposals are being prepared, and the pipeline keeps growing. Yet when you ask which customers are likely to buy next month, the answer is unclear.
Some inquiries have no confirmed budget. Some customers are only researching. Others are ready to move forward but are waiting for your proposal. All these situations appear together, making it difficult to understand the sales plan and decide where employees should spend their time.
Separating Leads from Opportunities, qualifying inquiries early and recording the customer’s actual plans helps make this work manageable.
This approach is useful both for companies selling B2B services and for businesses selling stocked goods through advertising, exhibitions, direct sales or partner referrals.
What is the difference between a Lead and an Opportunity?
A Lead is an inquiry that needs qualification.
An Opportunity is a potential sale that your company has decided to pursue.
A Contact stores information about a company or person. One customer can have several Opportunities for different purchases or projects.
Odoo allows you to convert a Lead into an Opportunity without checking whether the customer has a budget, needs your product or intends to decide soon. The Convert to Opportunity action changes the record’s status in your process. Your employees still need to perform the qualification.
The useful question is: what should we know before committing more time to this potential sale?
Anyone can learn Odoo CRM for free through our ERPixel e-learning course, including the principles behind Leads, Opportunities, Activities and sales planning.
Why should you qualify Leads early?
Qualification means checking a Lead against agreed formal criteria.
For most sales processes, you will need to establish:
- Who represents the customer? Which company do they work for, what is their position and how are they involved in the purchase?
- Is there a budget? Has money been allocated, is approval still needed, or is the customer exploring possible costs?
- Which product or service interests them? What do they need, and does it match your offer?
- How did they hear about your company? Advertising, an exhibition, direct contact, a partner recommendation or another source?
- When do they expect to decide? What steps must happen before that decision?
Your company will probably need these answers eventually. Learning them early usually costs less: fewer employees become involved before the basic situation is understood.
For a service company, this can prevent a consultant from preparing a detailed solution before anyone has discussed budget. For a goods supplier, it can prevent repeated quotation work for a product that does not meet the customer’s requirements.
Qualification also helps choose the right next action. A customer with an approved budget and a purchase planned this month needs different attention from someone collecting information for next year.
Agree on the criteria for your business and record the answers where colleagues can find them.
Example 1: A company selling B2B services
The following is an illustrative example.
A company contacts a business services provider about supporting its expansion into a new market.
The initial message asks for a proposal. Preparing one could involve a salesperson, a consultant and a delivery manager. Before involving all three, the salesperson qualifies the inquiry.
They establish that:
- The person making contact manages the expansion project.
- The customer needs a service the provider offers.
- An approximate budget exists, but final approval is required.
- The inquiry came through a partner recommendation.
- The customer plans to select a provider within six weeks.
The salesperson records this information and converts the Lead into an Opportunity.
The next step is a discovery meeting to define the scope. After that meeting, the provider prepares a proposal and records the estimated amount and expected closing date.
Once the proposal is sent, the Opportunity moves to a stage such as Waiting for Customer Feedback. The salesperson schedules a conversation after the customer’s internal review.
During that conversation, the customer explains that the scope is acceptable, but the finance director must approve the budget. The salesperson records the approval step and updates the forecast assessment.
The delivery manager can now understand why this project may start soon and what still needs to happen. If another salesperson takes over, the customer does not have to repeat the discussion.
Example 2: Selling stocked goods through Meta advertising
This is also an illustrative example.
A supplier advertises stocked commercial equipment on Facebook and Instagram. The campaign generates inquiries from businesses interested in buying.
Before launching the campaign, the supplier decides how inquiries will reach CRM and how their advertising source will be recorded. This requires an appropriate integration or an agreed import process.
An incoming Lead asks about a particular equipment model.
The salesperson checks:
- Which business is buying and who is handling the purchase.
- The required model, quantity and intended use.
- The available budget.
- When the customer expects to decide and when the goods are needed.
- Which advertisement or campaign generated the inquiry, where that information is available.
The customer needs several units within a month and has a suitable budget. The salesperson converts the Lead into an Opportunity, checks stock availability and prepares a quotation with realistic delivery terms.
Another inquiry asks for a product the supplier does not carry. Recording that outcome helps marketing understand whether the advertisement is attracting the intended audience.
A third customer is interested but plans to purchase in six months. The salesperson records the timing and plans a suitable future contact.
These outcomes provide more useful information than a campaign’s total Lead count. They show what kind of demand the advertising is producing and how much work is needed to turn it into sales.
What should each active Opportunity contain?
A useful Opportunity lets the salesperson and manager understand the purchase without reconstructing it from personal messages.
Keep the essential information current:
- The customer and the subject of the purchase.
- The responsible Salesperson.
- Qualification answers and important agreements.
- The current Stage.
- Expected Revenue and Expected Closing.
- The next Activity and its deadline.
Stages should describe meaningful progress in your process. For example, preparing a proposal and waiting for the customer to review it are different situations.
Define what must happen before moving an Opportunity to the next Stage. This gives employees a consistent way to describe their work.
How does ERPixel Forecast Status improve sales planning?
Expected Revenue tells you the estimated value of an Opportunity. Expected Closing tells you when the salesperson expects to conclude it.
To assess the plan more carefully, you also need to understand how firmly the customer’s intentions support that timing.
At ERPixel, we use a custom field called Forecast Status for this purpose. It classifies Opportunities according to the customer’s readiness to conclude the deal within the stated period.
Why is the expected closing date insufficient?
Consider two illustrative Opportunities, each worth €20,000 and expected to close next month.
For the first, the salesperson has sent a proposal. The customer is interested, but has not confirmed a decision date or explained the budget approval process.
For the second, the customer has confirmed the scope, discussed the budget and stated that they intend to select a supplier next month. A final internal approval remains.
The amounts and expected closing months are identical. The evidence supporting them is different.
Forecast Status makes that difference visible when reviewing the sales plan.
What should determine the status?
Define the categories around information employees can establish through communication:
- Has the customer confirmed an intention to purchase within the period?
- Is the scope sufficiently clear?
- What is known about the budget?
- Who participates in the decision?
- Which approvals or commercial questions remain?
- Is there an agreed next step that supports the planned timing?
The exact categories and their meanings should match your company’s process. Employees need clear rules for assigning them.
A useful status should be supported by a short explanation. For example: “The customer plans to decide in November; the finance director will review the proposal on 12 November.”
How does it help the sales manager?
Forecast Status allows the manager to review the expected amount by the strength of the supporting customer commitments.
They can see which Opportunities have a clearly discussed purchase period, which depend on unresolved approvals and which still need more information.
This helps answer practical questions:
- Which Opportunities provide the strongest basis for next month’s plan?
- Where should the salesperson clarify the customer’s intentions?
- Which potential deals may require management involvement?
- Which projects should delivery or purchasing teams prepare for?
Review the status when meaningful information changes. If the customer postpones the decision, update the expected closing date and the assessment together.
Forecast Status is an ERPixel customization. Standard Odoo supplies CRM records and planning fields; the additional classifier and its business rules are configured for the company’s needs.
How does Won/Lost analysis show which sales channel is better?
Suppose your company acquires potential customers through:
- Advertising.
- Exhibitions.
- Direct sales.
- Partner referrals.
Each source can produce a different number of Leads, qualification rate, sales cycle and commercial result.
Won/Lost analysis becomes useful when you compare these groups and investigate why their outcomes differ.
Compare the complete journey
Start with Leads from each source and follow them through qualification, Opportunities and final outcomes.
| Measure | What it helps you assess |
|---|---|
| Lead volume | How much demand the source produces |
| Lead-to-Opportunity conversion | How often inquiries meet your qualification criteria |
| Opportunity win rate | How often pursued deals are won |
| Deal value and margin | The commercial value of the resulting business |
| Time to qualification and closing | How quickly inquiries progress |
| Acquisition cost and employee effort | What it takes to produce the result |
| Lost reasons | Where and why potential business is lost |
Some of these measures require advertising costs, sales or financial data alongside CRM information.
Agree on the definition of Won so employees record outcomes consistently. If management wants to evaluate paid business or margin, connect the CRM outcome with the relevant orders, invoices, payments and costs.
What can the comparison reveal?
Meta advertising may generate many inexpensive Leads, while qualification shows that a large proportion need a different product or have an unsuitable budget. Marketing can then review the audience, offer and advertisement wording.
Exhibition Leads may be more relevant but take longer to close. A review shortly after the event would give an incomplete picture, so follow that group over a suitable period.
Direct sales may reveal a repeated objection about the proposed service scope. The sales manager can review targeting and the offer with the employees making contact.
Partner referrals may arrive with a clearer requirement and greater familiarity with your company. Check whether this translates into better conversion, deal value and acquisition economics as the channel grows.
These are possible findings to investigate in your data.
Turn the findings into action
A channel with the most Leads may create considerable qualification work. A channel with the highest win rate may produce too few deals to support the growth plan.
Assess quality against your objective: profitable sales, suitable customers, a manageable sales cycle and a sustainable acquisition cost.
Compare similar products, customer segments and periods. Give longer sales cycles enough time to develop, and keep the source recorded when a Lead becomes an Opportunity.
Then act on the recurring findings: adjust advertising, improve exhibition follow-up, refine direct sales targeting or develop productive partner relationships.
How it works in Odoo?
The basic workflow is short:
- Record the inquiry as a Lead if it needs qualification.
- Gather the agreed qualification information.
- Use Convert to Opportunity when you decide to pursue the potential sale.
- Manage its Stage, responsible Salesperson, planning information and next Activities.
- Record the outcome and use it in regular sales reviews.
Odoo’s conversion action supports the transition; your agreed qualification process gives that transition meaning. The official Odoo 19 guide explains the standard conversion options.
Start with a sales process you can explain
Choose a few current inquiries and review them from first contact to outcome.
Can you explain why each became an Opportunity? Who is responsible? What supports the expected amount and closing period? What does the customer need to do next?
These answers make the pipeline useful for everyday work and sales planning.
Anyone can study Odoo CRM for free with our ERPixel e-learning course.
If you need help implementing qualification, sales stages, Forecast Status or reporting across acquisition channels, contact ERPixel to discuss your process.