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In Release 6.0 and higher, you have the ability to manage sales leads that become available to your company. Using C3 Leads, you can create a lead and assign the lead to one or more of your partners as well as possibly to your own sales team. Using the Comergent eBusiness System, sales representatives work the lead and can convert their opportunities into orders. CHAPTER 28, C3 Leads covers all the tasks associated with lead management and Opportunity Administration by Partners covers all the tasks associated with opportunities.
Users must be assigned the DirectSales function to work as sales representatives. Users must be assigned the DirectSalesExecutive function to work as sales managers: that is, to delegate opportunities to other sales representatives.
When an enterprise lead administrator creates a lead (see To Create a Lead), they provide contact information (such as the contact's name, address, and so on) and they can indicate what products the contact is interested in. Having created the lead, the lead administrator can assign the lead to one or more partners: each partner is free to work the lead as they see fit. In this release, it is possible to assign a lead to the enterprise partner: this gives enterprise sales managers and sales representatives the opportunity to work the lead too.
When a lead administrator assigns a lead to a partner, an opportunity is created. An opportunity contains all the contact information from the lead and the list of products that the contact has expressed interest in. Partner users work on opportunities as follows:
The enterprise lead administrator can view partner activity for each lead by viewing each of the opportunities generated from the original lead. One opportunity is created for each assignment of a lead to a partner, and so if a lead is assigned to five partners, then five opportunities are created. Each of the partner sales representatives who works on an opportunity cannot see the other opportunities for that lead and so they work independently of each other.
The following entitlement functions are relevant in lead management:
When a lead is created by the lead administrator, they enter contact information for the person represented by the lead. Each lead must have at least one contact. When a lead is assigned to a partner, the contact information is passed to the opportunity, and so a partner sales representative can contact the contact person to ascertain more precisely the person's needs.
More than one contact can be associated with a lead. One of these must designated as the primary contact, and in lists of leads or opportunities this is the name that is displayed for each lead. If you delete the primary contact, then the first of the remaining contacts is made the primary contact.
When a lead is created by the lead administrator, a cart is created with the lead: the lead administrator can choose to add products to the cart to indicate the products that the contact is interested in. This cart is known as a proposal. When a lead is assigned to a partner, an opportunity is created: this is a copy of the lead created by the lead administrator, and it contains a copy of the proposal as it was created by the lead administrator.
When a sales representative works on an opportunity, they can use the associated proposal to add (or remove products) and to make adjustments to the prices of products as they think appropriate for their sale. The sales representative can also make new proposals associated with the same opportunity, or they can create a new proposal which is associated to a new opportunity, not an existing one.
When a sales representative wants to show a proposal to a contact, they can use proposal templates to determine the look-and-feel of the proposal. Templates are XSL files can be used that transform an XML representation of the proposal into an HTML page or PDF file. See Print Templates Tab for a description of how partner administrators can maintain proposal templates.
The format of a proposal template must be a valid XSL file. It must be capable of generating a valid PDF file from the XML representation of a proposal. See Proposal Templates for an example proposal template.
As described in Managing the Sales Channel, the Comergent eBusiness System has a function called EnterpriseLeadAdministratorSales. The person who manage functions in your enterprise assigns the function of EnterpriseLeadAdministratorSales to the person responsible for managing leads. This function gives this person, the Enterprise Lead Administrator, access to the C3 Leads application, including full capability for managing leads on the enterprise server.
As described in Partner Users, the enterprise channel administrator user creates, for each partner, a partner administrator user. This partner user usually creates the other partner users for their partner.
As sales and marketing activities (that is, phone calls, trade shows, and so on) generate sales leads, as Enterprise Lead Administrator, you add these sales leads to C3 Leads. As described in Creating and Modifying Leads, you can either create the leads manually, with the user interface, or you can upload the leads from a file. See Uploading Leads Using an XML File for information about uploading leads.
When you create the leads manually, you enter such general information as the territory and customer type to which the lead belongs. You can also define the partner type (distributor, OEM, etc.) and partner level (platinum, gold, and so on) to which the lead should be assigned. When you assign leads automatically (see Assigning Leads) or when you want to display only recommended partners, the Comergent eBusiness System uses this information to determine the recommended partners.
You can upload leads as described in:
The Automatic assign uploaded leads to their fixed recommended partners business rule determines whether uploaded leads are automatically assigned to partners. See Automatic assign uploaded leads to their fixed recommended partners.
You can create leads by uploading them using an XML file. The XML file must conform to the DTD provided by debs_home/Comergent/WEB-INF/dXML/4.0/LeadCreateListRequest.dtd. See To Upload a Lead for the steps you perform to upload the file. Before uploading the file, the Job Scheduler Message URL system property must be set to point to the Comergent eBusiness System. See Job Scheduler Settings for more information.
You must provide authentication information in the XML file by entering your username and password in the UserLogin and UserAuthenticator elements respectively. If the XML file is invalid, then an error message is displayed.
Once the leads have been added to C3 Leads, the leads are assigned to one or more of the enterprise's channel partners and optionally to the enterprise partner. This can be done manually, or it can be done automatically by setting a business rule (see Recommended Partners and the Business Rule).
You can do automatic assignment when you assign multiple leads simultaneously from the Leads Management List. You select the leads from the list, then click a browser button to perform automatic assignment. C3 Leads uses the business rule setting to determine the recommended partners for assigning the lead.
As described in Assigning Leads, you have several options when assigning leads manually. You can assign them on a lead-by-lead basis when you create or modify the lead, or you can assign multiple leads simultaneously from a list of leads. You can choose from among all the partners, or you can click a browser link that enables you to choose only from recommended partners determined by a business rule setting.
When you assign leads automatically, or when you want to show only recommended partners, C3 Leads uses the business rule setting to determine the recommended partners. See also Lead Management Recommended Partner Search Attributes.
The business rule works this way. When you set the rule, you can choose one to four attributes (partner type, partner level, territories, and customer type) to use when recommending a partner to a lead. You can also choose to use none of the attributes. Each lead is assigned these attributes when the lead is created. Each partner is assigned one or more of these attributes when the partner is created in C3 Profile Manager (see Managing the Sales Channel). The system recommends (or automatically assigns) a partner to a lead whose attributes (as defined in the business rule) match the same attributes in the lead.
For example, suppose the business rule is set to use partner type and territories when recommending partners. A lead is assigned the attributes OEM (as partner type) and North America (as territory). When you request to display only recommended partners, only partners that have the partner type "OEM" and the territory "North America" will be displayed (not one or the other). Likewise, when you are doing automatic assignment, the system automatically assigns the lead only to partners that have the partner type "OEM" AND the territory "North America".
A Partner Sales Manager can accept or decline the opportunities assigned to their partner by an Enterprise Lead Administrator. The Partner Sales Representatives work with the contacts to determine which products the contact is interested in. The Partner Sales Representatives can browse the product catalog, or search for products, just as if they were filling a cart.
When a Partner Sales Representatives has worked with the contact to select the desired products, the Partner Sales Representatives can click a button that converts the proposal to a an order.
At some point, the Partner Sales Manager will close the opportunity. An Enterprise Lead Administrator can view partner activity for a lead and notice when an opportunity has been closed. At this point, the Enterprise Lead Administrator can choose to close the lead on the enterprise side.
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