How the Sales Process Flows in ISO Mate
ISO Mate’s sales module follows a funnel pattern that mirrors how real sales teams work. Every prospect moves through three distinct stages: Lead, Opportunity, and Deal. Each stage adds more detail and commitment, and the system carries data forward automatically so your team never has to re-enter information.
The Funnel: Lead to Opportunity to Deal
Think of the sales process as a funnel that narrows as prospects get closer to becoming customers:
- Lead: An initial prospect. Someone expressed interest or was identified as a potential customer. You know their company and source, but you haven’t qualified them yet.
- Opportunity: A qualified prospect with real potential. You’ve confirmed there’s a genuine chance of closing business. You now track probability, expected revenue, and a target close date.
- Deal: A concrete transaction. You’re negotiating terms, attaching products with pricing, and working toward a signed agreement.
Each conversion (Lead to Opportunity, Opportunity to Deal) is a one-click action that copies relevant data forward and logs the transition in the activity timeline.
Pipelines: The Stages Within Each Level
A pipeline defines the stages your sales process follows. The default pipeline includes Lead, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, and Closed Lost, but you can customize these to match your workflow.
Pipelines apply across all three record types. When a lead is converted to an opportunity, the opportunity inherits the same pipeline. When an opportunity becomes a deal, the deal continues through the same stages. This consistency means your Kanban board and dashboard metrics reflect a single, coherent process.
You can create multiple pipelines for different products, regions, or teams. One pipeline is always marked as the default, and new records use it automatically unless you specify otherwise.
Leads: Where It All Starts
A lead captures the basics: company name, source (how they found you), expected revenue, and an assigned salesperson. Leads have their own status lifecycle:
- New: Just captured, not yet contacted.
- Contacted: Initial outreach has been made.
- Qualified: The prospect has a genuine need and budget. Ready for conversion.
- Unqualified: Not a fit. Archived for reference.
- Converted: Successfully turned into an opportunity.
The key action is conversion. When a lead reaches Qualified status, click “Convert to Opportunity” and the system creates the opportunity with all the lead’s data pre-filled. The lead is marked as Converted and linked to the new opportunity for traceability.
Opportunities: Qualifying and Forecasting
Opportunities add two critical fields that leads don’t have: probability (your confidence level from 0 to 100) and close date (when you expect to finalize). These fields power the revenue forecast on the dashboard.
Opportunities move through your pipeline stages just like deals. As you progress through Proposal and Negotiation, you update the stage and adjust the probability. When you’re ready to formalize terms, convert the opportunity to a deal.
The conversion copies the opportunity’s contact, pipeline, stage, expected revenue (as the deal value), close date, and assigned user into the new deal. The opportunity is linked to the deal for a complete audit trail.
Deals: Closing the Revenue
Deals are where revenue becomes real. They track a monetary value, currency, and move through pipeline stages toward one of two outcomes:
- Closed Won: The deal is signed. The system records a “won at” timestamp and sends a celebration notification.
- Closed Lost: The deal fell through. You must provide a loss reason, which helps with future analysis.
Deals also support product line items. Attach products from your catalog with quantity, unit price, and discount. The deal value recalculates automatically from the sum of all line items. This gives you accurate revenue tracking tied to specific products.
Products and Price Books
The product catalog is a shared inventory of what you sell. Each product has a name, SKU, unit price, currency, and an active/inactive toggle. Only active products can be added to deals.
Price books let you define alternative pricing. For example, a “Partner Pricing” book might offer 20% lower rates than your standard catalog. When adding products to a deal, you can pull pricing from any price book or override it per line item.
Contact Roles: Tracking Stakeholders
Sales rarely involves just one person. Contact roles let you link multiple contacts to any lead, opportunity, or deal with a specific role:
- Decision Maker: The person who signs off.
- Influencer: Someone who shapes the decision.
- Technical Evaluator: The person assessing your product’s fit.
- End User: The person who will actually use the product.
- Other: Any other stakeholder.
These roles carry context through the funnel. When you convert a lead to an opportunity, you can see which contacts were involved from the start.
The Kanban Board: Visual Pipeline Management
The Pipeline Board shows your deals as cards organized into columns by stage. Each card displays the deal name, contact, value, and close date. Drag a card between columns to update its stage instantly. The system logs the change, sends notifications, and updates the dashboard metrics in real time.
Use the filter bar to focus on a specific pipeline, assigned user, or date range. This is especially useful for sales managers reviewing their team’s progress.
Linking Tasks, Events, Notes, and Emails
From any lead, opportunity, or deal, you can:
- Create or link tasks for follow-up actions (e.g., “Send proposal by Friday”)
- Schedule calendar events for meetings, demos, or calls
- Attach notes to document conversations and decisions
- Link emails to maintain a complete communication history
Every linked record is logged in the activity timeline, so anyone picking up the account has full context.
Activity Timeline: The Complete History
Every lead, opportunity, and deal has an activity timeline displayed in reverse chronological order. It automatically logs:
- Stage changes (e.g., “Moved from Proposal to Negotiation”)
- Assignment changes (e.g., “Assigned to Sarah”)
- Linked records (notes, tasks, emails, calendar events, contacts)
- Product additions and removals
- Conversions (lead to opportunity, opportunity to deal)
This gives your team a single source of truth for every interaction and decision.
Notifications: Staying Responsive
The sales module sends notifications for key events:
- When a lead, opportunity, or deal is assigned to you
- When a deal’s stage changes
- When a deal is won or lost
- When a deal’s close date is 3 days away
- When a deal has had no activity for 14 days (stale deal reminder)
You can customize which notifications you receive under the Sales category in your notification preferences.
Sales Dashboard: Measuring Performance
The dashboard provides five key metrics, all filterable by pipeline, assigned user, and date range:
- Pipeline Distribution: How many deals are in each stage and their total value. Helps identify bottlenecks.
- Revenue Forecast: The weighted sum of deal values multiplied by opportunity probability. Gives a realistic projection of expected revenue.
- Win Rate: The percentage of deals closed as Won out of all deals that reached a terminal stage. Tracks team effectiveness over time.
- Conversion Metrics: Lead-to-opportunity and opportunity-to-deal conversion rates. Shows how efficiently prospects move through the funnel.
- Funnel Summary: A breakdown of counts grouped by status (for leads) or pipeline stage (for opportunities and deals). This gives you a snapshot of your entire funnel, showing exactly how many records sit at each level and stage.
Putting It All Together
Here is a typical workflow:
- A salesperson captures a Lead from a website inquiry. They record the company, source, and expected revenue.
- After initial contact, they update the status to Contacted, link the contact as a Decision Maker, and create a follow-up task.
- After a discovery call, they mark the lead as Qualified and click Convert to Opportunity.
- The opportunity tracks a 60% probability and a close date 30 days out. They schedule a demo as a calendar event.
- After the demo, they convert the opportunity to a Deal, attach two products from the catalog, and move it to the Proposal stage on the Kanban board.
- Negotiations happen. They link emails and notes documenting the back-and-forth.
- The deal moves to Closed Won. The system timestamps the win, sends a notification, and the dashboard updates automatically.
Management monitors the dashboard throughout, filtering by team member or pipeline to spot stale deals, forecast revenue, and track conversion rates.