Staging in Odoo CRM is the most basic module for tracking and managing sales opportunities through various stages of business. The staging process allows you to categorize your leads in categories such as “Lead Generation,” “Proposal Sent,” and “Negotiation,” which enables the sales team to manage and prioritize tasks accordingly.

In Odoo 18 CRM, staging helps businesses simplify the handling of the sales workflow, automate monotonous tasks, and enhance conversion. Here is the blog that will help you understand why staging in Odoo CRM is such a big thing and guide you through setting it up and letting stages work out for your optimum benefit and sales effectiveness.

What do you mean by Staging in Odoo CRM?

In CRM, staging represents different stages that a lead or opportunity travels through the sales process. Every stage presents a key point or milestone the lead travels as it makes its way toward conversion. At every stage, the sales teams either move closer to a lead to a deal or decide an opportunity is no longer viable.

For instance, the general stages of a sales pipeline that most businesses follow are as follows:

  1. Lead Generation: This is the very first stage wherein leads are gathered through marketing campaigns or inbound inquiries.
  2. Lead Qualification: This is the stage wherein the sales team can decide whether or not the lead is appropriate and suitable for the products the business offers.
  3. Proposal Sent: The business sends a formal proposition or quotation to the lead.
  4. Negotiation: This is the stage where the terms of the deal are discussed, and the final steps toward closing are taken.
  5. Won: When the lead agrees to the terms and becomes a customer, completing the deal.
  6. Lost: When a lead is no longer a viable opportunity, either because they chose a competitor or did not engage.

The sales stages for any business will vary according to the complexity of their products or services, the industry, and the overall sales strategy. Companies can track every sales process step in detail using staging in Odoo CRM.

Why is Staging Important in CRM?

There is not enough to say about the importance of staging in Odoo CRM. The following are some reasons why sales teams need to define and manage stages:

  1. Lead Management: A proper staging process aids the sales team in managing the leads at a specific stage at which they are. Therefore, the lead’s action priority can be performed easily. For instance, if the lead is at the “Negotiation” stage, a follow-up is probably more critical than when the lead is in the “Lead generation” phase.
  2. Pipeline Tracking and Reporting: This can track a lead’s time in each pipeline stage. That data is invaluable for sales velocity, forecasting, and identifying bottlenecks. Powerful reporting in Odoo 18 further helps, allowing insight into conversion rates and the time spent in each stage.
  3. More Streamlined Process and Accountability: Staging helps define a structured workflow. Each lead progresses through stages logically, with specific tasks, communications, and follow-ups at each phase. This ensures consistency and accountability, as everyone knows what needs to be done at every stage of the sales process.
  4. Routine Work Automation: Available in Odoo 18 are automation rules that may automatically move the leads through numerous stages at particular conditions specified earlier. Saving time automatically results from avoiding some leads sitting in the wrong or outdated stages.
  5. Customization to Fit Your Business: Every business has a unique sales process. The flexibility to customize stages to reflect the workflow of your business will allow for more accurate lead management and ensure that the CRM system adapts to your processes, not the other way around.

How to Set Up and Manage Staging in Odoo CRM

Staging in Odoo CRM provides an all-inclusive and user-friendly interface for setting up and managing stages in your sales pipeline. Let’s see how you can create and manage these stages in Odoo 18, from creating new stages to automating their progression.

Step 1: Access the CRM Module

Log in to Odoo 18 and then to its CRM module  . You will be taken to Pipeline view, where all leads and opportunities are depicted in a simple, easy-to-handle Kanban format. This view brings you up to speed on the status of all the leads and their corresponding stages.

Step 2: Customization of Sales Stage

From now on, Odoo 18 will help you be flexible and personalize the sales stage, ideally fitting your selling cycle. Here is how to do it:

1. Pipeline View Access:

  • Tap on the CRM module’s “Pipeline” Tab so that you will have access to how your sales appear in pipeline forms, including defined stages available, opportunities available, and all leads.

2. Creating A New Stage:

  • Choose “Configuration” from the top bar and select “Stages” from the list of options.
  • Click on “Create New to include a new stage.
  • Enter Stage Name such as “Lead Qualification, “Negotiation,” and more.
  • Set Sequence. The sequence determines the sequence or order of the stages in a sales pipeline.
  • Select Stage Type: Select Default, Won, or Lost, depending on where the stage fits the sales process.

Customize each stage to express and fine-tune your CRM system to support your workflow. For instance, if your sales team should track leads differently by region, you can create the appropriate stages.

Step 3. Organize and reorder stages

Once your stages are created, it’s crucial to arrange them in the correct order. The sequence ensures that your sales pipeline follows the proper flow. Odoo 18 simplifies this by offering a drag-and-drop feature to reorder stages:

  • Click and drag stages within the configuration area to position them according to your sales process.
  • The stages should be in sequence following the business’s sales cycle, from a lead generation that converts into a sale until the sale’s closing.

You can create a pipeline view according to your sales teams’ process.

Stage 4: Assignment of Stages to Sales Teams

This way, different stages will be assigned to several groups of sales teams for businesses so that only the proper teams will work on leads at specific stages.

  1. When creating or editing a stage, an option is presented to assign it to a particular Sales Team.
  2. Once you pick a team, only the chosen one can work on those leads, eliminating the confusion and clear ownership for each opportunity.

Step 5: Folding Stages for a Cleaner View

Odoo 18 now enables the user to collapse the stages on Kanban, removing clutter by only focusing on active stages. The feature would come in handy whenever stages are briefly vacant or inactive. To do that,

  • Fold a stage- Click on the gear button to the right side of the name of a stage while viewing it through the Kanban, and click on ‘fold.’
  • Hide leads in that stage so the workspace is cleaner and your team can focus on significant stages.
  • Expand a stage by simply clicking the triangle icon at the left.

This feature offers an easily removable and aesthetically pleasing way of managing your sales pipeline.

Step 6: Automation of Stage transitions

Automation is a game-changer in the sales pipeline. For instance, from Odoo 18, you could create automation rules to make leads move automatically across stages after predefined conditions were met. In this way, it reduces interference and time use and minimizes errors.

Create a rule, for example:

  • Automate a lead to “Negotiation” as soon as a proposal is sent.
  • Send reminder emails when a lead has been stuck in the same stage for too long.
  • Mark leads as “Lost” after a certain period of inactivity.

To create automation:

  • Go to Configuration > Automation Rules.
  • Define the conditions (e.g., when a lead responds, when a follow-up is overdue, etc.).
  • Set the next stage in the pipeline so that the lead should transition automatically.

With automation, leads would pass through the pipeline without being viewed manually, thus increasing efficiency in the process.

Step 7: Monitoring and Reporting

Having set up your stages and workflows, monitor how leads flow through each. Advanced reporting and analytics from Odoo 18 monitors performance this way:

  • Lead conversion rates: Establish how many leads progress from one stage to another.
  • Sales velocity: Know how fast leads are moving through your pipeline.
  • Bottleneck analysis: Identify where leads get stuck and optimize your process.

These are the critical insights to improve the efficiency of your sales team and adjust your strategy.

Conclusion

Staging in Odoo CRM is essential for tracking, managing, and optimizing your sales pipeline. With Odoo, businesses can now have the most powerful tool to manage leads through clearly defined stages. From creating and ordering stages to automating workflows and analyzing performance, staging in Odoo CRM will make it easier to stay on top of your sales process and convert more leads into customers.

Follow these steps, as described in this blog, and you can configure and manage your CRM stages so your team is better organized, focused, and productive in sales performance, hence business growth.

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