Opportunities
Opportunities are only available in the NextGen version of eBECAS/EDMISS.
Opportunities are used to record and track details about potential deals currently in progress with your leads.
As these opportunities advance through the sales pipeline, they can be seamlessly converted into offers, while the corresponding leads into students.
Although opportunities are most commonly use for student recruitment, their application extends to other marketing and sales efforts, such as agency partnerships and homestay recruitment, among others.
Importance of Opportunities
Understanding the importance of opportunities within your sales and marketing strategy is crucial. Opportunities are not just potential sales; they're the backbone of business growth and customer relationship development. Here's why they are so important:
Key Aspects of Opportunities
Opportunities serve as valuable prospects with a heightened probability of conversion, requiring focused efforts to move them closer to enrolment.
Recruitment Forecasting and Planning: Opportunities represent the first stage on your recruitment process. By tracking the potential deals in your pipeline, you can predict future revenue more reliably, aiding in resource allocation and financial planning.
Performance Measurement: They provide a clear metric for measuring the effectiveness of your recruitment and marketing teams. By analysing the conversion rate of opportunities into offers, you can assess team performance and identify areas for improvement.
Customer Relationship Insight: Opportunities offer valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences. Tracking the progression of a deal helps in understanding what appeals to your leads, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
Strategic Decision Making: By analysing the types and sources of opportunities, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your marketing and recruitment efforts. This strategic alignment can lead to more efficient and successful business operations.
Product and Service Improvement: Feedback and interactions during the opportunity phase can provide critical insights into your product or service offerings, guiding future enhancements and innovations.
Key Concepts
Opportunity Lead
An opportunity is a potential deal with a lead, therefore an opportunity always belongs to a lead. A lead can have multiple opportunities but an opportunity always belong to a single lead.
Opportunity Owner
Opportunities do not have owners but the opportunity’s lead does. Therefore, the owner of the lead is also the owner of all the lead’s opportunities.
Opportunity Stage
The Stage represents where the opportunity on a given process it is at. For example, on a recruitment process, the stage can be used to determine at what stage, on the sales process, the opportunity is at.
During the set up of the app, some default stages are created. You can customise this list by updating the ‘Opportunity Stage’ picklist (learn more about picklists here).
Management of Opportunities
eBECAS/EDMISS NextGen facilitates the effective management of opportunities through various stages of the conversion process:
Identification: Use personalized contact or application forms through Guest Forms to identify and capture potential opportunities.
Engagement: Use personalised communication channels, including emails, SMS, and document creation to engage with opportunities. Provide detailed course information and address enquiries.
Nurturing: Build relationships by offering relevant information, assistance, and consistent follow-ups. Efficiently assign and update opportunity statuses as they progress through the conversion funnel.
Conversion: Seamlessly convert opportunities into actual offers within the system. Automatically transfer all pertinent details from opportunities to offer items.