Creating and maintaining cases

120 Figure 10.10: Example of profiling customer prospects by the OpenERP company The sales person starts by asking the questions mentioned above and then with a couple of minutes of work can decide what to propose to the prospective customer. At the end of the exhibition prospects’ details and their responses to the questionnaire are entered into OpenERP. The profiling system automatically classifies the prospects into appropriate partner categories. This enables your sales people to follow prospects up efficiently and adapt their approach based on each prospect’s profile. For example, they can send a letter based on a template developed for a specific partner category. They would use Open ERP’s report editor and generator for their sales proposition, such as an invitation to a training session a week after the show.

10.8.3 Using profiles effectively

To use the profiling system you will need to install OpenERP’s crm_profiling module. It is part of the core OpenERP system in version 6.0.0 so you do not have to download it separately from addons-extra. You can also use the Reconfiguration Wizard and add Profiling. Once the module is installed you can create a list of questions and the possible responses through the menu Sales → Configuration → Leads Opportunities → Questions. To obtain the scheme presented earlier you can create the following questions and responses: Table 10.1: Questionnaire for defining profiles Questions Possible Responses Journalist ? Yes No Industry Sector ? IT ERP Consultant Services Industry Others Number of Staff ? 1 2-20 21-50 51-100 101-500 500+ Contact’s job function ? Decision-maker Not decision-maker Already created a specification for the work ? Yes Soon No Implementation budget ? Unknown 100k 101-300k 300k For instance, a sales person specializing in large accounts for the service sector could have a profile defined like this: • Budget for integration: Unknown , 100k-300k or 300k , • Already created a specification for the work? Yes , • Industry Sector? Services . When entering the details of a specific prospect, the prospect’s answers to various questions can be entered in the Profiling tab of the partner form. OpenERP will automatically assign prospects to the appropriate partner category based on these answers. Customers corresponding to a specific search profile can be treated as a priority. The sales person can access the profile of the large active accounts easily.