Understanding Prospects, Pipeline and Deals

Overview

Prospects, Pipeline and Deals are aspects of your firm's potential to generate business from new and existing clients and are essential to your firm's growth. They are how your firm can track potential new clients and their financial impact on your firm. This article outlines these concepts within Practifi and how to create a Prospect in your organization.

• Prospects
• Pipeline
• Deals
• Creating a Prospect

Prospects

Prospects are people you've identified as potential clients, whether they are Households, Individuals, or Organizations. These potential clients are tracked by having their record type set to Prospect with fields to track their potential for closing with your firm. As you interact with your Prospects within Practifi, you can track activities, such as calls or emails, to clearly understand how often a Prospect is interacted with and develop their relationship with your firm further. Keeping a close eye on a Prospect's potential makes it easier for your firm to accurately assess their ability to become Clients and the overall financial gain for your firm. 

Pipeline

Any potential new business coming into your firm is a part of your Pipeline. This includes any new business coming from a Prospect or any add-on business opportunities from your existing Clients. The services provided to a prospect are considered a new business, as a Prospect would not typically have prior business with your firm. If an existing Client requests further services from your firm, such as providing tax accounting to an organization you already do financial planning for, this new opportunity becomes part of your Pipeline. The Pipeline is the potential for financial gain from any new services you may be providing. Tracking this gives a clear picture of the financial and Client growth that your firm has the opportunity to secure. 

Deals

Tracking your Pipeline opportunities, whether they are new business or add-on, is done by adding Deals to your Client or Prospect. Deals are used to track the inflows and outflows of money from your firm and are where the transition of an opportunity into revenue-earning work is managed. Deals give your firm an accurate view of the financial impact a Client or Prospect has, helping your firm establish good opportunities to pursue. 

Creating a Prospect

Once a Contact record has been made through the global actions in the top right-hand corner of the screen, it can be promoted to a prospect. This action is done by navigating to the Household, Individual or Organization you want to promote and selecting Promote to Prospect from the Actions menu located on the entity's side panel.

Selecting this option will take you through the Prospect Wizard in a pop-up menu to promote the Household, Individual, or Organization from a Contact to a Prospect. The first stage within this wizard is to select the type of service your prospect is interested in getting from your firm. 

Once the service type has been chosen, the Prospect Wizard will progress to a page to input specifics about the Prospect, from potential AUM to the Prospect's likelihood of becoming a Client. 

After entering the Prospect's information, select Finish to complete the Prospect Wizard. Once the Prospect Wizard is complete, the Key Entity will now be in your system as a Prospect. The record's prospect designation will be reflected in the record definitions under the Key Entity's name on the record side panel.