In this lesson we will cover:
– Enabling Accounts and Prospects
– Prospect on a New Ticket
– Converting a Prospect/Account to a Customer/User
Enabling Accounts and Prospects
There is the option to store potential customers under the Prospects section of the customers area. To begin using this functionality you can enable the accounts and prospects setting found in Configuration > Sales > General Settings *Scroll to the bottom of the list*:
Fig 1. Use Accounts and Prospects for Opportunities setting
After enabling this setting you will have the ability to convert current opportunity contacts (stored on the associated opportunity tick) into Prospects:
Fig 2. Convert Opportunity Contacts to Prospects button
Without this setting enabled, the clients stored against opportunity tickets would not have any prospect information within Halo, instead they would only have the information stored against their ticket. To improve this the prospects and accounts area has been created, which will create a new prospect for each sales opportunity you have for a new customer.
Prospect on a New Ticket
The new ticket option for the Sales area will show the option to create a prospect from the new ticket screen:
Fig 3. Add a new Prospect in the Contact Details of the new opportunity screen
This feature allows for the standard customer information to be stored on the Prospect profile, meaning that any tab stored at customer level: CRM notes, users, activity, etc… Can be used for prospective clients. Allowing you to store information for anyone that comes through your Sales contacts. Any custom fields created that are of entity Customer, will also be added to the prospects profile.
Converting a Prospect/Account to a Customer/User
Converting a Prospect/Account to a Customer/User record can be done from an Opportunity by clicking the "Convert this Prospect to a Customer" which replaces the "Create a new Customer from this Opportunity" button.
This will flip the Account to a Customer, and all Prospects at the Account to Users.
Fig 3. Convert this Prospect to a Customer
Alternatively you can turn an account into a customer by navigating to the account, clicking edit and you will notice at the top of the details tab, there is the "Is an Account" checkbox, which can be disabled in order to turn the account into a customer:
Fig 4. Is an Account checkbox
When this setting is turned off, the account will no longer exist and instead will show within the customers lists. All associated prospects that you have stored under the account will become users under the new customer and the main contact for the new customer will become the prospect that was at the top of the prospects list, when it existed as an account.
The ability of this feature means that all information stored against the prospect will pull through to the newly onboarded customer at the point of creation. Using the existing functionality of creating a new customer lacked the ability to extract stored information against a ticket.
This functionality adds two new entity types to the Customers Management Area tree. Accounts and Prospects which are Customer and User records labelled separately to show they are Prospective Customers and users.
Each new list in the tree can use the customisable, filterable list functionality:
Fig 5. Customer tree view
Two new Ticket Rules have been added; "Is an Account", "Is a Prospect". Using these rules allows the targeting of opportunity tickets when trying to create automations, or potentially send out notifications when certain criteria is met i.e. ticket is stored against a prospect and the status has updated to "Prospect Chasing". This allows clearer distinguishment between a ticket for a customer and a ticket for a prospective customer.
You may also want to categorise your most important prospects/ accounts, this could be achieved with a ticket rule by using the criteria "Is an Account" and "Is an Important Customer".
Fig 6. Example of a ticket rule based on accounts
Where the important customer field is a checkbox found in the details tab of a customer/ account.
Converting an Opportunity Contact to a Prospect will create an Account record using their Opportunity Company Name, and a Prospect record using the Contact name and Contact details.
When logging new Opportunities, there are options to select existing Customer/User records or Account/Prospect records, along with the option to create a new Prospect on the spot.
The Call screen will now show a callers Open Opportunities if applicable, when a prospect is matched as the caller. Allowing the sales team to be in charge of any sales calls and giving more visibility between a sales call and a support call.
As of v2.168
1. Customers that are configured as "Accounts" will no longer be pushed to Accounting Applications, Liongard or IT Glue
2. Main Contact no longer mandatory when creating an Account/Prospect
