Launchpad Lesson 15 - Sales Path

Now that you've configured your opportunities, let's look at a cool feature called the Sales Path. We'll show you what it does and how to customize it for your sales team.

The Sales Path is added guidance for the salesperson on every opportunity. We can configure it to help salespeople know what information they need and provide sales advice customized for every opportunity stage.

It has two components: Key Fields and Guidance for Success.

At each stage of the opportunity, you can suggest which fields the salesperson should be aiming to complete, given where they are in the sales process. It can also be set up to provide useful tips for how to navigate each stage.

If your company subscribes to a certain sales methodology or sales training program, like our Value-Based Selling sales training program here at Salesforce Training, this is a great place to highlight the key lessons.

Sales Path is like giving your sales team their own personal sales coach to guide them along the way.

Let's look at an opportunity example so I can show you where the Sales Path lives. That way, you'll understand what we're about to configure.

Here we are on an opportunity record that's in the Proposal stage. We can get to the Sales Path by selecting this carrot for Show More.

When we click on it, it opens up Sales Path and displays the two sections I mentioned: Key Fields and Guidance for Success.

You can see that these are the fields that we would expect the salesperson to have ascertained by this stage of the sales cycle. The Amount and Close Date are completed, but we think our salespeople should have also completed an ROI analysis in order to send out the proposal.

The salesperson can click the pencil or the Edit link to make any changes.

Guidance for Success is useful for us to include sales tips or coaching from any sales training programs or playbooks that you might employ.

When you're done with Sales Path, you just click the carrot, and you can hide it from view.

To configure this, once again, let's go into Setup. In the Quick Find box, type Path and then click Path Settings.

Here you will see the two default paths: one for the Lead object and one for the Opportunity object.

We recommend starting with the Opportunity Sales Path and only setting up a Lead Path if you see value in doing so.

Now, if you just don't like the Path functionality and don't want to use it, you can always click Deactivate. You'll still see the stages across the top; there just won't be any guidance.

You will see the button for New Path, which allows you to create multiple path options for different record types. But in this course, we're just going to modify the default one.

So, on the Opportunity Path, click Edit.

We don't need to change any of this, so click Next.

Now, you'll see the opportunity stages that you have set across the top, and then the Key Fields on the left and the Guidance on the right.

The goal here is to say that if you are on this stage, then you should have these fields completed before moving to the next stage.

It's important to note, though, that just because you add fields here, it does not prevent the user from going to the next stage if they're not filled out. It simply advises them that they should know this information if they are following the prescribed sales process.

If we look at the Proposal stage, you can see an example of how Salesforce has set up Sales Path for its own standard sales stages.

We'll add some fields to our customized stage for Discovery to show you how simple it is.

Click Add Fields to display all of the fields on the opportunity record.

For Discovery, we like our salespeople to provide a description of the opportunity, an approximate timeline, and, at this point, they would know the Lead Source.

You can reuse these fields at each stage. For example, we like our reps to update the probability of closing at every step, so we'll include that field on all stages.

Over in the Guidance section, we can include some of the key lessons from the last sales training program on how to conduct a proper discovery.

This is just a formatted text field, so it's super easy to use. You can also add links and images if you want.

Now, you can go through the rest of the stages and edit the fields and guidance for each one based on your process.

This can even be helpful for Closed Won and Closed Lost statuses, so the user knows what the next steps are after the opportunity is either won or lost.

Once you have everything customized how you like it, click Next at the bottom to go to the final step.

Here, you want to make sure your path is activated if you're ready to use it.

And this last option is kind of fun if you want confetti to appear on the screen when you win a deal. And frankly, who doesn't like confetti? Especially the kind you don't have to sweep.

You can choose to set that here. Then click Finish.

All right. So now you have your Sales Path set up for opportunities.

This is usually something that changes over time as salespeople evolve their sales process. Again, this is where the admin who works hand in hand with their sales team can keep making improvements to Salesforce over time.

Up next, a lesson on lead conversion.