Salesforce Opportunity Stages: A Complete 2024 Guide

Understanding Salesforce opportunity stages is key to successfully managing sales in your Salesforce CRM. With them, you can track the progress from the first contact with a lead to closing the deal with a customer. As an opportunity moves through the pipeline, the chance of winning the deal increases.

Tracking Salesforce opportunity stages helps sales teams know what actions are needed to close deals successfully in less time. Clearly defined and properly customized opportunity stages in Salesforce improve efficiency and solve a lot of sales challenges.

In this article, we will explain what an opportunity in Salesforce is, and how to create an opportunity in Salesforce, and will guide you through all the intricacies of sales opportunity stages in Salesforce.

What is a Salesforce Opportunity?

In Salesforce, an opportunity represents a potential sales deal in progress. The Opportunity object is utilized to track all the details about the deal, such as:

• The related accounts,
• Important contacts,
• The expected close date,
• The current stage in the sales process,
• The value of the prospective sale.

Opportunities in Salesforce are essential for tracking and managing sales pipelines, as they provide visibility into sales activities, forecast revenue, and help sales teams assess the effectiveness of the current pipeline, therefore, closing more deals successfully.

What are Salesforce Opportunity Stages?

Salesforce stages of opportunity are the phases that a sales deal goes through from the initial contact to its closure.

The opportunity stages in Salesforce can have statuses like Prospecting, Pledged, or Closed/Won, for instance. The sales opportunity stages can be customized to reflect the business sales process.

What are the Key Features of Salesforce Opportunity Stages?

The essential functionalities and features of Salesforce sales stages are:

• Probability & Forecasting helps your sales teams predict the likelihood of closing a deal at each stage, enabling more accurate forecasts and better resource allocation.
• Path and Guidance for Success provides a visual representation of the sales stages and offers insights and tips at each step, helping your team navigate the opportunity stages of Salesforce more effectively and improve the chances of a successful deal.
• Automation and Validations streamline repetitive tasks, allowing consistency and efficiency, ensuring that all necessary information is captured correctly at each stage, and maintaining data integrity within all Salesforce pipeline stages.

These key features support sales teams in managing their pipelines more efficiently, making informed decisions, and ultimately increasing their chances of closing deals.

What are the Opportunity Stages in Salesforce by Default?

The default Salesforce Opportunity stages are:

• Prospecting,
• Qualification,
• Needs Analysis,
• Value Proposition,
• Id. Decision Makers,
• Perception Analysis,
• Proposal/Price Quote,
• Negotiation/Review,
• Closed Won,
• Closed Lost.

Where to Find Opportunity Stages in Salesforce?

You can access default Salesforce stages of opportunity by navigating to:

Setup > Object Manager > Opportunity Object > Fields & Relationships > Stage

Here’s the detailed walkthrough on where to find Salesforce opportunity stages:

Step #1: Navigate to the setup page by clicking on the gear icon and then ‘Setup’.

Step 1: Find ‘Setup’ Icon to Add an Opportunity Stage in Salesforce | Ascendix

Step #2: Select the ‘Object Manager’ tab and search for the ‘Opportunity’ object.

Step 2: Select the Object Manager Tab to Find Opportunity Object in Salesforce | Ascendix

Step #3: Click on the ‘Fields & Relationships’ tab and search for the ‘Stage’ field.

Step 3: Find the ‘Fields and Relationships’ Tab and Search for the ‘Stage’ Field in Salesforce | Ascendix

Once on this page, you can scroll down, and you will be able to see all active and inactive Salesforce Opportunity stages.

Where to See All Active and Inactive Opportunity Stages in Salesforce | Ascendix

How to Create Custom Salesforce Opportunity Stages?

Step #1: Navigate to the ‘Stage’ field tab and click on the ‘New’ button:

Where to Start to Create a Custom Salesforce Opportunity Stage | Ascendix

Step #2: In the field opened, fill in the required details about your new custom opportunity stage in Salesforce:

1. New Stage Name;
2. Type (which can be either Open or Closed, Won/Lost);
3. Probability (this field accepts the value range from 0% to 100% and represents the likelihood of the opportunity closing);
4. Forecast Category (this defines how far the customer is from making a purchase). Typically, there are five main forecast categories:

• Pipeline: Opportunities are still in the early stages. Only a few in this category will end up closing.
• Best Case: Qualified opportunities. Still needs further work but has high chances of closing.
• Commit: Commit indicates high confidence in success, with rare exceptions for delays. Expect a 90%-win rate for this Forecast Category
• Closed: Closed won opportunities.
• Omitted: Lost or unqualified opportunities.

Description: This information doesn’t show up on the opportunity page and its goal is to facilitate system maintenance in the future.

Step #3: After inserting all the information, click ‘Save.’ A new Salesforce opportunity stage is now available.

What Values Should Be Added to Create an Opportunity Stage in Salesforce | Ascendix

It’s also possible to reorder the Salesforce sales stages by going back to the previous page and hitting the ‘Reorder’ button.

How to Reorder Opportunity Stages in Salesforce | Ascendix

How to Track Opportunities in Salesforce?

You can track Salesforce opportunity stages progress by using the Salesforce reporting feature together with the Opportunity history object.

This allows you to see how the opportunities progress through the pipeline.

Anytime a user changes the Amount, Probability, Stage, or Close Date fields on an opportunity, a new entry is added to the Stage History.

With this data, it is possible to analyze how long it takes to move opportunities through each stage.

To create such reports in Salesforce, follow the instructions below:

Step #1: Navigate to the ‘Reports’ tab and click ‘New Report’:

How to Create a New Report in Salesforce | Ascendix

Step #2: As the report type, you need to select ‘Opportunity History’ and then click ‘Start Report.’

Step 2: Select ‘Opportunity History’ and Click ‘Start Report | Ascendix

Step #3: Here you can play around with the filters and choose what fields should be shown in the table.

Step 3: Select Fields to Be Shown in a ‘New Opportunity History’ Report in Salesforce | Ascendix

How to Track Historical Trends with Opportunity Stages in Salesforce?

You can track historical trends on opportunities utilizing the ‘Historical Trending’ feature.

It shows the changes between five snapshot dates, such as five business days or five business weeks. ‘Historical Trend Reporting’ in Salesforce for Opportunity stages can help your organization identify any possible delays in pipeline progression.

To enable such a feature, you will need to follow these steps:

Step #1: Go to ‘Setup‘ and search for ‘Historical Trending’ on the ‘Quick Find’ search bar and select it.

Where to Find Historical Trending in Salesforce | Ascendix

Step #2: Click on the ‘Enable Historical Trending’ checkbox.

How to Enable Historical Trending in Salesforce | Ascendix

Step #3: Once you enabled it, you will be able to create reports of the type ‘Opportunities with Historical Trending.’

How to Create an ‘Opportunities with Historical Trending’ Report in Salesforce | Ascendix

How ‘Opportunities with Historical Trending’ Report in Salesforce | Ascendix

How to Use Salesforce Opportunity Stages to Generate Reports and Dashboards?

SFDC Opportunity Stages Duration Report. Using the Opportunity History report type you can measure how much time the opportunity stays on each stage. This information is provided with the Stage duration field and is represented in days.

How to Create a New Opportunity History Report in Salesforce | Ascendix

Salesforce Opportunity Stages Duration Report | Ascendix

Salesforce Opportunities Stages Report. Utilizing this report, you can visualize how many opportunities there are in each stage, especially with the help of the funnel chart.

Salesforce Opportunities Stages Report | Ascendix

Learn more on how to:

• How to Create an Opportunity Stage Conversion Report in Salesforce
• How to Set Up an Email Alert when a Salesforce Opportunity Stage Changes 

Best Practices in Managing SFDC Opportunity Stages

Knowing how to use Salesforce opportunity management tools is only a part of the job. You must also understand why they are used and what business processes are enhanced by them.

To ensure this, follow the guidelines and best practices of Salesforce opportunity stages management:

• To use Salesforce stages of opportunity effectively, it’s important to map your sales stages to Salesforce with clear unambiguous criteria. These might be the key milestones or actions performed by the potential buyer or the sales team, for instance, to sign a contract, perform a demo, send a sample, etc.
• Work with the stakeholders to identify key milestones or actions that are significant for your business processes. It will provide better visibility of where your opportunities currently are.
• It’s also important to define the close probability and forecast category for each stage as it will later be used for opportunity forecasting (Amount & Probability).

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Opportunity Stages in Salesforce

• Too many or too few stages. This really changes from company to company and sales process to sales process, but ideally, it should be a quantity that will not make it time-consuming for the sales rep and not clog up the stage dropdown.
• Stages not aligned with the actual sales process. If the opportunity stages in Salesforce do not represent how the sales funnel in the company actually goes, it will ultimately lead to inaccurate tracking, forecasting errors, and as a result inefficient sales management, and the whole point of tracking deals in Salesforce CRM will be lost.
• Ambiguous stages. This refers to those stages where the action to proceed is not clear or it overlaps with other stages. Stages can also be ambiguous when there is no consistent terminology used in the Salesforce sales process or when the stage is open to interpretation.
• Opportunity information is not being updated. This way you end up with outdated and inaccurate data, which defies the ability to effectively track your sales progress, forecast future sales, and make informed decisions about the deals.

We are sure that by following these guides and the best practices of Salesforce opportunity stages management you will increase your sales team’s efficiency and enhance your sales process.

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