Nexl offers users a great tool to better manage their opportunities: the Opportunity Tracker. Both individual lawyers and Business Development executives can leverage the Opportunity Tracker to get a better grip on the workflows related to opportunities.
Why is opportunity management important?
Having a centrally managed database for opportunities brings a ton of benefits and enables law firms to stay on top of the different stages in their sales pipeline.
It creates an easily accesible, shared space where the Admin users (BD team and Management) can look at all of the opportunities, and quickly see what's in the pipeline and at which stage a specific opportunity currently sits.
Opportunity tracking quantifies the volume of work in the pipeline, giving a heads up as to what law firms can expect going forward and take appropriate action.
It will offer BD teams hard data on the volume of business that is generated through different opportunities.
Opportunity tracking creates structured data that generates insights and a better understanding of why some opportunities are lost or won. Nexl automatically calculates the Win and Loss ratios of all opportunities being tracked.
Where can I create an Opportunity?
There are three places where you will be able to create a new opportunity.
In the top menu of Nexl you will see a dedicated button to add opportunities.
You can also add opportunities directly from a specific Company record, as shown on the image below.
Finally, from within the Opportunity Tracking section, accessible via the Top menu, you can also create new opportunities.
How do I create an Opportunity?
The pop-up form that will be shown when adding an opportunity will ask you to complete the following information (see screenshot above):
Associated Company
Status
Key Contacts
Short Description
Tags
Associated Fee (Nexl supports only one currency, usually US$ or your local currency)
Internal Owner and Additional Lawyer(s)
Referral Source
Once you create your opportunity, it will be added to the Opportunity Tracking section of Nexl. Individual users will be able to see their own Opportunities in the My Contacts view, under "Opportunities".
Once (and only after) an opportunity is created, you can add a document or link to the document (usually the proposal document itself). Just go into the Opportunity and click on "DOCUMENTS" in the top panel as shown on image, and add documents fom there.
How do I manage Opportunities?
Inside the Opportunity Tracking module of Nexl, Admin Users can manage all the opportunities that have been added to the system.
The opportunities are placed in different buckets depending on the stage in which the opportunity currently is.
Depending on the Status field, we can distinguish between the following stages of an opportunity:
Opportunity: this is the initial stage when an opportunity is identified and created on the system. This can be used for clients or prospects where there is a clear and concrete opportunity to win new business. This might be triggered by a conversation, a particular event or client insight.
Requested: In this stage, the client has expressed a clear interested and requested a proposal, which will typically already include pricing.
Proposal Sent: At this stage, the Firm has sent out a proposal and will be waiting for an answer. It is highly recommended to include reminders or tasks, so that we are reminded to follow up or take specific actions.
On Hold: At this stage, the outcome of the opportunity isn't clear and put on hold.
Won: for opportunities that have resulted in new work.
Lost: for opportunities that were lost.
By clicking on the number in each of the buckets, you can filter the list of opportunities based on the Status.
When opening a list of opportunities (each row is one opportunity), you will be able to see various aspects of the opportunities (the columns of the table), such as:
Unique ID
Compny name, logo and website URL
Any tags added when the opportunity was created.
Owner (the person inside your Firm responsible for this opportunity)
Proposed Fee
Status
Engagement infographic for the Company associated with the opportunity
Any tasks or upcoming meetings
Last Interaction with the Company
Finally, at the extreme right, you will be able to Edit or Delete the opportunity.
You can view the details of every opportunity by clicking anywhere in the row, opening up a Window that combines the current information for the Opportunity, combined with a view of the timeline of the associated Company, where you can browse any recent activity, notes and tasks (or add those).