VERY IMPORTANT – Starting the Statement of Work

Skip this video if you get the concept!

Spell out all the work you’ll do to actually build those features.

Example: “We have no visibility into our leads pipeline, where leads are getting stuck or neglected, and how long they are spending at each stage in the process, etc.…”

In our flowchart, we map out the process through which a sales rep would usher a Lead, but that flowchart does not necessarily answer this question. So, our response and answer, in the statement of work, is:

1. We will enable lead status history tracking and sync all of our CRM data to Zoho Analytics. That data, in the Leads and Lead Status History tables, is what we need to make the following reports:
2. Lead Pipeline (current view into where all our leads are)
3. Lead Status Duration reports (how long do leads spend in each status?)
4. We can break both of these reports out by sales rep as well, to see who is over-performing/under-performing
5. Neglected Leads reports
6. To build this Pivot Table, we auto join the Lead Status History table with the Leads table . Throw the Lead Owner, Lead Status, and ‘Modified Time’ (with a label of ‘Last Touched’) into the Rows section. We only include (using a filter) status history records that don’t yet have a ‘Stage Duration’ value (meaning we are only concerned with current status history records). We add a relative date filter to only show status history records with a ‘Modified Time’ greater than 7 days ago.”

This report then shows us all of the leads that have not changed status in the last seven days. This would help sales people and managers ensure they are following up with leads in a timely manner.

Researching and testing features to make sure they actually solve your pain points is sometimes necessary. As you’re spelling out the work you’re going to do, you should definitely be tinkering in the system. Does that feature work the way you thought it would?

If you have already built out something almost identical though, you obviously don’t need to rebuild it in order to make sure it works. Just don’t promise something that you can’t deliver!

Take a look at what Peter created here.