Pipelines and Opportunities: customization and best practices [video]

  • 8 October 2021
  • 12 replies
  • 4155 views

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My name is Chris and welcome to Copper! In this tutorial I will walk you through how to approach customizing Pipelines in Copper.

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Note: As of March 2022, Opportunities in the Copper left-hand menu is changing to Pipelines. Click here for more information.

 

A Pipeline in Copper represents a unique process from start to finish. For example, you might have separate Pipelines that represent your sales process and your account management process. Within each Pipeline there are progressive stages that represent a milestone in that journey. For example, the default sales Pipeline in Copper includes the stages: Qualified, Follow-up, Presentation, Contract Sent, and Negotiation.

 

How to customize and set Pipelines in Copper

Outlined below are three steps you can take to setup and customize your Pipelines in Copper. To access customizing Pipelines in Copper as a Copper Admin, navigate to Settings > Customize > Pipeline Stages.

1. Determine how many Pipelines you will need.

Each Pipeline you create in Copper will represent a process. If you have multiple processes that have different steps, you may want to create multiple Pipelines in Copper.

First, evaluate the different processes you would like to capture in Copper. For example, if you are only capturing New Sales, you may just have one Pipeline. But if you are capturing New Sales, and in addition tracking growth, you may have a separate Pipeline for renewal, upsells or expansion opportunities. If your business sells multiple products with different sales funnels, then you may want to create separate pipelines with each pipeline’s stages catered to the different product suites you sell.

 

2. Set the stages for each of your Pipelines.

Once you’ve determined what Pipelines you would like to create, the next step is to outline the stages in order to create the Pipeline in Copper. Here are a few tips:

First, try to keep the number of stages you create between 4-6, adding to few stages may not give you a proper understanding of the stage of each of your opportunities, in reverse, having too many stages may increase the administrative work from your sales rep, and could also result in reps being unsure where to place an opportunity in the sales funnel.

When creating your opportunity stages, it’s best to align to clear steps in the sales funnel. For example, rather than using the stage “Proposal”, try breaking it down to Proposal Sent and Proposal Signed, this will give a clear indication to when your team should move the opportunity to the next stage.

 

3. Custom fields for Pipeline

Each Pipeline can have their own set of fields. If you have custom fields that relate to one Pipeline but not the other, you can customize your custom fields per each Pipeline in Settings →  Customize →  Manage Fields on Records.

If you would like to learn more about Reporting in Copper, and how to gain key insights into your Opportunities and Pipelines, I highly recommend our weekly Q&A.

 

Let us know is the comments if you found this guide helpful!


12 replies

Is there a way to reorder pipelines? For example, in your screenshot above, if I wanted to place Business Development above New Sales, how would I do that? 

 

Thanks

 

Answer from Michelle: there’s currently no way to re-order your Pipelines. If you’re interested in this feature, I recommend upvoting this Idea thread so that we can @mention you in any updates.

Is it possible to edit the statuses of pipeline opps beyond won, lost, abandoned?

 

Andy 

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Hi @Andel, I answered your question in your other thread, but I wanted to add it here too in case somebody stumbles along these comments.

To answer is no, you’re not able to edit the Opportunity Statuses - you’ll only have access to the default options for Open, Won, Lost, and Abandoned.

Is there a way to reorder pipelines? For example, in your screenshot above, if I wanted to place Business Development above New Sales, how would I do that? 

 

Thanks

 

Answer from Michelle: there’s currently no way to re-order your Pipelines. If you’re interested in this feature, I recommend upvoting this Idea thread so that we can @mention you in any updates.

Has this changed?  It would be nice to reorder pipelines.  During setup we kind of just added them and now we have to scroll and I would like to prioritize them…..CHRIS I know you can make this happen!  It’s 2022 baby!

Chris Clark - my man - it’s Jason Ramshaw, you’re number one COPPER walking billboard referral client.  It would be sooo nice to reorder existing pipelines.  It’s 2022 - I know you got this.  Who do we need to talk to in programming?  Let’s roll out the new version next week and update this!  -Jason Ramshaw

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Hi guys: it is possible to copy/duplicate an existing pipeline ? i have a pipeline structure based on product vintage (year - we make wine) and i’d like to use the customized pipeline i’ve just build as a model for those to come, and the dream, with the workflow automations built in...perhaps i’m dreaming.... thanks for your help!

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@Jason Ramshaw I don’t have any update on that feature unfortunately! But I totally agree, rearranging pipelines would be great. I’ve sent your feedback over to the product team. Feel free to upvote the open Idea we have for this so that we can @mention you in any updates!

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@VINIV it’s not currently possible to duplicate a Pipeline. Feel free to post an Idea for the product team to see. We’ll @mention you in any updates. One of our product designers is looking into the Pipeline creation flow (e.g. adding pre-made templates). So if you can post as an Idea I’ll make sure to forward it to her!

I like @VINIV’ suggestion too. I have created a showing pipeline to show the progress of a listing’s showing request - the stages are the same for each real estate listing so it would be nice to duplicate a pipeline or create a template to be used in the future.

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@Cathy Muldoon that’s interesting, thanks for the feedback! I’m curious though - is there a particular reason you would want to store those opportunities in multiple pipelines when the stages are the same? Generally, we recommend creating a new pipeline only when the stages will be different, and using tags and custom fields to do filtering within that pipeline.

Hi,

The stages are the same but I need to know which showing is for which property and track which agent/buyer is viewing that property and follow up with that seller. Open to hear if there are other real estate agents tracking showings in different ways.

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@Cathy Muldoon great, thanks for the details! Most real estate agents track both listings and individual showings in the way we described in this thread. That is, there is one single pipeline with all the stages, and you have one Opportunity for each property. And each time you have a showing for a property, you log an Activity with your notes so you can look back later and do you follow-ups.

In the example below, we’ve set up our pipeline, and added four properties (opportunities) inside it. One is still in the Listing Agreement stages, two are in active showing, and another is in the offer period:

 

If I click into one of them, I can see all the Property Showings I entered:

In the area circled by the pink box, I can see the Property Showings for 465 Queen St E.

I recommend this setup over creating one Pipeline for every listing/showing because it lets you view everything in one place. For example, I can quickly check in on 465 Queen St E and 506-1 Yonge St using the view. Whereas if I created separate Pipelines for each, I’d have to manually switch to each Pipeline to check each property. And a large number of Pipelines becomes difficult to manage as well.

I hope that helps!

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