▤Opportunities in practice

The ones you will later search, filter and evaluate by — not the complete advert.

The minimum:

• Title — the way people search for it. “Website relaunch Weber facade construction” instead of “Project 2026-114”.
• Client and at least one contact person.
• Location, if it matters.
• Status.

Also useful:

• Deadline — the detail because of which opportunities are lost.
• Volume, at least as a rough estimate.
• Source and link to the source.

What you can leave out: typing up the complete advert. If the opportunity comes from a file or from the opportunity search, the original text is under “Description from the source” anyway.

The text does not have to be pretty — it has to be findable.

By changing it as soon as something changes — and not only when someone asks about it.

Three rules that are enough in practice:

1. Check the status after every contact. A phone call without a status change is almost always a forgotten click.
2. Lost is also a result. Anyone who leaves lost opportunities open to make the list look full is mainly fooling themselves.
3. Completed means completed. After that, no further process starts by itself.

The touchstone: can you tell at a glance at the list what is being worked on this week? If not, the status is not being maintained.

Take ten minutes on Fridays and go through the open ones. That is the most effective habit in this area.

With two entries instead of one: the deadline on the opportunity and a follow-up before it.

The deadline is the fact. The follow-up is what reminds you of it — and early enough to still do something. For a quote, that is a few days; for a tender, more like two weeks.

What has proven itself:

• Two follow-ups for anything that takes effort: one to start, one to send.
• Enter the deadline as soon as it is known, even if it is still a long way off.
• Build in a buffer if someone else has to contribute.

The most common mistake is not the forgotten deadline but the follow-up on the day of the deadline. Then you find out in good time that it is too late.

In two passes — first sift, then save.

First pass, in the results list: read the titles and discard everything that obviously does not fit. Experience shows that this is half of them.

Second pass: for the rest, open the description and decide. Whatever remains is taken over with “Save as an opportunity”. This creates an opportunity and a contact with the tag “Opportunity search”.

What you should do immediately afterwards, while you are still into the topic:

1. Set the status — usually “open” or an early stage.
2. Enter the deadline, if the advert names one.
3. Create a follow-up.

Without these three clicks, you have a longer list, but not more work in progress.

And the most important tip: do not save everything. A list of opportunities with two hundred entries, of which you are pursuing ten, is unusable — and the research uses up quota.

Via the import from a file — just like with contacts, with the same rules.

What you should prepare:

• First row with column names, nothing above it.
• One row per opportunity.
• Location in a column of its own, not hidden in the title.
• Write the client as in the database, otherwise duplicate companies are created.
• Contact persons with an email address, if you have them — then they go straight into the address book.

The dry run shows what will happen before the import. Always use it, especially the first time; it counts the same as the real run.

And the question beforehand: do you really need all of them? A file with four hundred rows from a portal usually contains two hundred that do not suit you. Filter in the file before importing — that is faster than tidying up afterwards.

If something went wrong, “Undo this import” takes back the whole run.

Earlier than most people do — and by phone, not by email.

A workable rhythm after a quote:

• After three to five days: a short call to ask whether everything arrived and is clear.
• After two weeks: ask about the status of the decision.
• After that: once a month until there is an answer — or until you set it to lost.

What you want to find out in the conversation is not “yes or no” but what is missing right now: a piece of information, an approval, a budget, a date. You can respond to that; you cannot respond to “we will get back to you”.

And record the result in the notes. By the third call, that is the difference between a conversation that picks up where you left off and one that starts from scratch.

Set the status, do not delete.

Why they remain valuable:

• They show what a customer needs. Someone who wanted a website a year ago may now need a shop.
• They are the best reason to get in touch: “How is it going with what we did back then?”
• They prove your experience in an area — useful for the next quote.
• Lost opportunities tell you why you did not get the job. If price came up three times, that is information about your offer, not about chance.

What you should do immediately when an opportunity is done:

1. Change the status, so that the open list is correct again.
2. Note: how it turned out, for what reason, on what terms.
3. Follow-up with the customer in three months.

The third point is the one that brings follow-on business, and the one almost everyone forgets.

Through the shared collection — with two agreements you should make once.

First: who leads an opportunity? Decide that and record it in the notes or via a follow-up assigned to one person. An opportunity for which everyone feels responsible is followed up by nobody.

Second: when is the status changed? Ideally immediately, by whoever had the conversation. The history in the file shows who changed what and when anyway — that is not a control, but the answer to “Who last spoke to whom here?”.

Helpful in practice:

• Assign follow-ups to a person, do not leave them unassigned.
• Notes in complete sentences. Nobody understands “Mail to FK” in four weeks, not even the person who wrote it.
• Before going on holiday, go through your own open opportunities and hand them over.

More than most people use — and it is the basis for your acquisition:

• Which customer enquires regularly? These are your most important relationships, regardless of the individual opportunity.
• Which source delivers? Your own acquisition, recommendation, opportunity search — with very different yields per hour invested.
• What is your hit rate? Won versus all decided. If it is very high, you may be quoting too cheaply; if it is very low, you are bidding for the wrong things.
• How long does a decision take? The figure you use to plan your workload.

For this to work, you need three things maintained: status, source and volume — and the date on which something was decided.

That is three clicks per opportunity, and the difference between a pipeline and a filing system.

Via the address book, not via the opportunity. No email goes out from an opportunity file.

The route:

1. Open Contacts and filter by tag — “Opportunity search” for addresses from the research, “Opportunity import” for addresses from an imported file.
2. Check the selection. Not every contact person from a tender is someone you are allowed to write to.
3. Create a campaign like any other.

What you must not forget: whether you may write is not answered by the tag but by advertising law. An address that appears in a public tender is not an invitation to advertise.

The advantage of this detour: unsubscribes, the blocklist and deliverability apply equally to all recipients — regardless of which opportunity they once came from.

Go through it rigorously once — and then change the habit that led to it.

The pass, in this order:

1. Set everything older than three months with no history to lost or completed. That is usually half.
2. Merge duplicates — take the notes over into the remaining file and close the other.
3. For the rest, check the status and set one follow-up each.

What remains afterwards is your real working list. It is shorter than it felt before, and that is the point.

The habit behind it: do not save anything you do not intend to pursue. Especially with the opportunity search, the temptation to take everything interesting is great. A result you will not call this week does not belong on the list.