#customer-success#sales-support#sfdc-users#sdr_global#smb#mktgops#outreach#it_help#marketing_programs#marketing#community-programs| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Accepted Lead | A lead a Business Development Rep or Sales Development Rep agrees to work until qualified in or qualified out |
| Account | An organization tracked in salesforce.com. An account can be a prospect, customer, former customer, integrator, reseller, or prospective reseller |
| AM | Account Manager |
| AE | Account Executive |
| APAC | Asia-Pacific |
| BDR | Business Development Representative |
| CAM | Channel Account Manager |
| CS | Customer Success |
| BDR | Business Development Represenative - focused on outbound |
| EMEA | Europe, Middle East and Africa |
| EULA | End User Licence Agreement |
| High intent | an event, webcast, demo that is a strong indicator of purchase or evaluation |
| Inquiry | an Inbound request or response to an outbound marketing effort |
| IQM | Initial Qualifying Meeting |
| LATAM | Latin America (includes all of Central & South America) |
| MQL | Marketo Qualified Lead - an inquiry that has been qualified through systematic means (e.g. through demographic/firmographic/behavior lead scoring) |
| MVC | Minimal Viable Change (not Model View Controller) |
| NCSA | North, Central, South America (legacy region being phased out) |
| NORAM | North America |
| Qualified Lead | A lead a Business Development Rep or Sales Development Rep has qualified, converted to an opportunity and assigned to a Sales Representative (Stage 0-Pending Acceptance) |
| RD | Regional Director |
| ROW | Rest of World |
| SAE | Strategic Account Executive |
| Sales Admin | Sales Administrator |
| Sales Serve | A sales method where a quota bearing member of the sales team closes the deal |
| SAO | Sales Accepted Opportunity - an opportunity Sales agrees to pursue following an Initial Qualifying Meeting |
| SDR | Sales Development Representative - inbound focused |
| Self Serve | A sales method where a customer purchases online through our web store |
| SLA | Service Level Agreement |
| SQO | Sales Qualified Opportunity |
| CSM | Customer Success Manager |
| TEDD | Technology, Engineering, Development and Design - used to estimate the maximum potential users of GitLab at a company |
| UPA | Ultimate Parent Account |
| Won Opportunity | Contract signed to Purchase GitLab |
A customer lifecycle is a term used to track the different milestones prospective customers go through as they learn about GitLab and interact with our sales and marketing teams. Each subsequent milestone is a subset of the previous milestone, and represents a progression from not knowing GitLab to being a customer (and fan) of GitLab.
At the highest level of abstraction, we use the terms lead, opportunity, and customer to represent a person's progression towards becoming a customer of GitLab.
Those three terms also correspond to record types in salesforce.com.
Lead => Opportunity => Customer
However, there are more granular steps within the above milestones that are used to track the above process with more precision. They are tracked as follows:
| Funnel stage | Record Type | Status or Stage |
|---|---|---|
| Raw | Lead or Contact | Raw |
| Inquiry | Lead or Contact | Inquiry |
| Marketo Qualified Lead | Lead or Contact | MQL |
| Accepted Lead | Lead or Contact | Accepted |
| Qualifying | Lead or Contact | Qualifying |
| Qualified | Lead or Contact | Qualified (converted) |
| Pending Acceptance | Opportunity | 0 - Pending Acceptance |
| Sales Accepted Opportunity | Opportunity | 1 - Discovery |
| Sales Qualified Opportunity | Opportunity | 2 Scoping - 6 Awaiting Signature |
| Customer | Opportunity | Closed Won |
When going from Qualifying to Qualified Lead the lead is duplicated to an opportunity, and the lead is set to qualified and not being used anymore.
Lead or Contact: #lead–contact-statuses
Opportunity: #opportunity-stages
Sales Accepted Opportunity: #criteria-for-sales-accepted-opportunity-sao
The following calculation is used to measure/plan for sales capacity. This is a calculation only and should be used to set goals and plan. Sales capacity is an individual metric that is based on several factors (lead source, tenure of salesperson, competitive landscape, geographic location, rep productivity) not included in the formula below:
Conferences, Field Events, Owned Events
Event details are owned by the Field Marketing Team with execution of system tracking, landing pages, reminders, and follow up completed by Marketing Program Managers. See the events handbook page for more details.
A breakdown of MQLs and lead scoring can be found in the marketing operations handbook.
Sales Segmentation is based on Account Demographics: Max Family Employees, which is the maximum of all Account Demographics: Employee Count values from the accounts within this hierarchy.
Account Demographics: Employee Count can differ from one account to another within a hierarchy, but the Account Demographics: Max Family Employees value will be the same for all accounts within a hierarchy.If the employee count is unknown or blank and manual research cannot confirm, Sales Operations will mark the account as SMB with a placeholder of -1 employees in the Number of Employees: Manual - Admin field in order to get a Territory to populate and assign the account to an account rep.
Large = 2,001+ total employeesMid-Market = 101-2000 total employeesSMB (Small Business) = 0-100 total employees
We use a hierarchy structure to determine what the number of employees is for the account.
The hierarchy of our data tools on Accounts as they relate to the Account Demographic Max Family Employees count is shown below.
LinkedIn/Websites are not designated data sources.
If a prospect communicates a different employee size from Zoominfo that conflicts with segmentation of what is determined by Zoominfo then SalesOPS should be notified via chatter on the record with documented proof from the prospect. Admins have the ability to override the Employees and bypass this hierarchy but only during our sales segment review process.
Mid-Market accounts can be managed either as a MM Key Account or belong to a MM Territory AE.
In order to address issues when it is believed that the employee count, account address and/or account ownership is incorrect follow the Sales Operations process to have the Account Demographics fields updated and the account will be reviewed per the Rules of Engagement.
Provide the URL to validate the request. Examples of valid sources include but are not limited to financial filings, newspaper articles, reports directly from the company. During the Sales Ops review period it is at the discretion of the Sales Ops team to have the Total Employee count updated or to have it remain the same.
If the number of employees, according to our sources based on our hierarchy as described in Segmentation has changed, the Sales Ops team will automatically update the accounts segment and follow the Rules of Engagement account review process.
Enterprise Sales
#emea Slack channel): Michel Isnard, VP ENT EMEA#apac Slack channel): Rob Hueston (Interim), Regional Director#us-east Slack channel): Darren Moffett, Area Vice President#us-west Slack channel): Tanya Helin, Area Vice President#public-sector Slack channel): Bob Stevens, Vice PresidentCommercial Sales
#smb Slack channel): Nick Christou, Regional Director#international-smb Slack channel): Helen Mason, Area Sales ManagerTerritory tables are maintained within the Sales Handbook. Both maps & written tables are kept up to date with all pairings and territory assignments. Our Traction Complete routing workflows and SFDC reports are based on these tables.
The Location of each account used to determine its Sales Territory is determined by a combination of 3rd party data systems (Zoominfo,Zuora Billing Accouunts) and manual overrides. This address is stored in "Account Address (fka Billing Address)" on the Account object in SalesForce. This field inherits data from other fields in the following priority:
GitLab recognizes the grouping of companies that are related based on their primary business activities in the following ways:
The Industry and Sub-Industry of each account is determined by a combination of 3rd party data and manual overrides. The information is stored in the Industry and Sub-Industry fields on the Account object in SalesForce and inherit data in the following priority:
Industry and Sub-IndustryIndustry & Sub-Industry Enrichment Cadence
The Industry and Sub-Industry data on an Account is enriched and updated automatically on a daily cadence.
Account Ranking in SFDC allows sales to focus and prioritize activities for their target customers, easily nominate or flag accounts for both marketing support and ABM campaigns. Account ranking would also be leveraged to drive discussions during QBRs.
In order to rank accounts each Enterprise Sales rep would update the 'Account Rank' field located in Account Rank Information section and can also add the Account Rank Notes. The Account rank should be added at the Ultimate Parent Account level and to not more than 50 Accounts.
The Account Ranking Guide can be used to help the Strategic Account Executive focus on a cadence to target each Account Rank.
It is a requirement for the Commercial Sales Team to tier their accounts using the fields on the Account Object. This helps prioritize the accounts to go after when prospecting for new or expansion. Please see the Account Ranking section of the Commercial Sales handbook for definitions specific to SMB and Mid-Market AEs.
Go to Market Rules of Engagement
Since an accounts Website is a key data point in determining the accounts segment and the accounts address and thus the resulting territory and ownership, the website on an account in salesforce is a required field on the layout.
In the event that the account is linked to an individual that uses a free email domain (or other similar cases) than the value of [Blank] should be used as the value for the accounts website.
A breakdown of Initial Source can be found in the marketing operations handbook.
A breakdown of lead and contact statuses can be found in the marketing operations handbook.
Routing is determined by Sales Segmentation, Region, and Global Account Ownership. Routing through Lean Data when a record has no less than 30 points, this means that they have engaged with at least one piece of content or visited a high value page.
Traction works within the Salesforce ecosystem and is the primary tool leveraged to manage all routing workflows. The Marketing Operations team is responsible for ongoing management and customizations within Traction. For more information see the dedicated Traction Complete page.
All Contact Us requests must be followed up within one (1) business day Service Level Agreement (SLA) and follow up must be tracked as an activity on the record within Salesforce.
U.S. Public Sector: Routed to the U.S. Public Sector Inside Sales team.
Professional Service Requests are treated like a Contact Us request and followed up within one (1) business day Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Follow up must be tracked as an activity on the record within SFDC.
Requests submitted through the professional services page will be routed following Global Account Ownership rules.
Notification of form submission will be sent to the Strategic Account Executive (SAE) and Sales Development Representative (SDR) as well as Customer Success manager.
Initial response to form submission is the responsibility of the Account Owner (i.e. SAE).
Trials can be requested through web form or within product UI for both self-managed or SaaS.
Default trial length is thirty (30) days, but can be manually extended by the GitLab team for both the SaaS and self-managed products. Trial extensions for the SaaS product use the plan_change_request issue template found in the dotcom Group, internal-requests project.
Extending self-managed trials requires access to the internal Licensing App.
United States
Rest of the World
Contact Ownership follows the rules as laid out below:
When an BDR is assigned to an Account to support and assist with outreach, the BDR will be added in the BDR Assigned lookup field to the account in Salesforce.
This field then populates down to the related Contact records.
Only BDR team members are able to edit the BDR Assigned field. They are enabled to mass update the BDR assigned field based on public account views, enablement and support from their manager.
Records, both LEAD and CONTACT, need to be synced to Outreach to ensure email activity is properly mapped back to Activity History in SFDC.
The owner of the record in SFDC does not need to match the owner in Outreach.
In order to meet compliance standards our SFDC instance uses a private model. This private model allows for some records to be visible by all Gitlab team members who use Salesforce, while other records may not be visible to them. Currently this is in place as it pertains to records owned by the Public Sector team. All salesforce records (leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities etc.) owned by the Public Sector team are only visibility to other members of the public sector team and a group of supporting staff who have been reviewed and permitted to view the these records. All other records (owned by non-public sector team members) maintain their standard visibility levels.
This is important as it relates to inbound records or accounts in a sales reps name. If you believe you have been incorrectly assigned a record that should belong to the public sector team member please coordinate with your manager, the sales-ops team or a member of the public sector team to review the record.
Only Sales Systems, Sales Operations and Channel Operations have the ability to change the account owner in Salesforce. This is to ensure that the Rules of Engagement are followed and to ensure that the account is assigned to the correct account owner based on Account Demographic outputs and parent/child association. If there is an issue with account assignment, follow the exception process outlined in the Account Ownership Rules of Engagement.
To request an update to the account owner, please tag @sales-support in Salesforce Chatter on the account record you are attempting to update.
Only Sales Systems, Sales Operations, Channel Operations, Deal Desk, and Finance have the ability to change the opportunity owner in Salesforce. This is to ensure the Rules of Engagement are followed and opportunity assignment to the correct owner based on the corresponding Account Owner (see Opportunity Ownership for exceptions), Account Demographic outputs, parent/child association, and compensation plan. If there is an issue with opportunity assignment, follow the exception process outlined in the Opportunity Ownership Rules of Engagement.
To request an update to the opportunity owner, please tag @sales-support in Salesforce Chatter on the opportunity record you are attempting to update.
Contact Ownership follows the rules as laid out below. This contact ownership cannot be updated as it is maintained by an automated process in Salesforce
Lead ownership is set by Traction Complete due to specific rules based on lead status, segment and by region/territory which may include round robin. Lead ownership changes are based on role permissions. Currently a lead owner can change the lead to a new owner. If the lead is owned by a queue, ownership can be changed by all SDRs and BDRs but should only be done if activity is going to be immediately placed on the lead and should be done as part of a specific account strategy. SDR/BDR Team Leads as well as SDR/BDR Leadership have expanded privileges that allow them to change ownership of leads not owned by queues (ex. a lead owned by an incorrect BDR).
The majority of leads are owned by the related status queue or the sales development team.
Sales Admin.
This user should only be used by ADMINS. Non-Admins should not be reassigning records to this user.
Before assigning to this user, admins should do their best to assign records to the actual users within Salesforce.
If you are unsure of who to assign it to please coordinate with the SalesOps Team.
This is also only a temporary solution until we have a more scalable solution in place that will reassign records to individuals who can and will actually be able to work records.ACCOUNT records in Salesforce are created in a number of ways - list imports, mass creation screen flows, field event booth scans, research, networking, webcasts, content downloads. Ideally all ACCOUNTS exist in Salesforce and team members are only creating CONTACT records; however, if a connection is made at an event and follow up needs to be done prior to official event list upload occurs team members should do the following:
Standard ACCOUNT type - required fields are Account Name & Account TypeStandard CONTACT type - required fields are Last Name, Account Name (use lookup tool to find ACCOUNT just created) & Initial Source (i.e. where is this name coming from Conference = Field Event, SDR Generated or AE Generated = regular networking event, etc)Unknown is not acceptable.Initial Source on a CONTACT record does not equal Source on an opportunity. Refer to Initial Source for guidance on why this is important.Record Owner to your nameWhen official event list import is completed the created ACCOUNT or CONTACT record will be appended with the additional data collected at the event.
If there are any questions or you need assistance, please ping Marketing or Sales OPS in Slack #sfdc-users channel.
Phone do not substitute the Account Phone - Leave it blank on the Contact record.Initial Source of the record that was created first.This process is specific for the unique cases of creating totally new contacts for an account that also have to be associated with an opportunity. An example of when to use this process is when you meet a number of new contacts at an account during a demo for a specific opportunity. The process to create these contacts for that account and to have them related with that opportunity would be through the steps listed below or as demonstrated in this video:
New Contacts & Opp Contact RolesIt is important to note that by following this process that all contacts must meet the following criteria:
Territories are assigned based on Sales Segmentation and routing for each type of inbound request is through Traction Complete.
LEAD/CONTACT Records with the Initial Source of GitLab.com are not to be engaged, prospected or targeted unless they have taken a handraising 'active' activity, such as Trial - Enterprise, Trial - GitLab.com, Contact Us, Demo, 'Webcast', 'Content' and/or engaged in Web Chat.
For information about GitLab's email policy and the types and number of emails we send, please see our Email Communication Policy.
Initial Source cannot be used to determine if a lead is 'active' or 'passive' since the Initial Source is set upon first touch attribution; therefore, looking at the Last Interesting Moment field is the primary field used to begin determining if a record is actively being worked.
Reviewing the Activity History in Salesforce is another factor considered when evaluating 'active' or 'passive'.
A LEAD or CONTACT is considered 'Active' if they have taken an Trial - Enterprise, Trial - GitLab.com, attended a high intent live webcast or demo and/or engaged Web Chat, these are all handraising 'active' activities.
These types of records are considered 'Active' for a minimum of 60 days from the date of the handraising activity.
For example: the record is considered 'Active' for entire duration of EE trial, plus 30 days after EE Trial End Date.
Salesforce campaigns are used to track efforts of marketing tactics - field events, webcasts, content downloads, etc. The campaign types align with how marketing tracks spend and align the way records are tracked across three of our core systems (Marketo, Salesforce and Bizible) for consistent tracking. Leveraging campaign aligns our efforts across Marketing, Sales and Finance. For information on integrated campaigns (managed by Marketing Programs), please see the Integrated Campaigns handbook page and to learn more about planned, in progress, and previously executed campaign tactics, please see the Marketing Programs handbook page.
To ensure that we're engaged with those customers who were a part of the Starter/Bronze End of Availability initiative, Sales is asked to track their outreach (and other engagements) in SFDC by way of activities. Below are the steps to ensure we're capturing that activity:
Process For Tracking EoA Customer Outreach: You should follow your existing outreach cadence and tracking via SFDC activities. However, for any/all outreach to EoA customers, you make two important updates in SFDC:
EoA Sentiment field on the Account (red, yellow, green - defined in the help text)Reporting:
FY22 On Starter/Bronze field (if box is checked, they’re an EoA customer). A full list by segment, region and owner can be found HEREThe Marketo programs for the corresponding campaign types have been prebuilt to include all the possible necessary smart campaigns, email programs, reminder emails and tokens that are to be leveraged in the building of the program.
You can find a breakdown of all Marketo program types and progression statuses in the Marketing Operations handbook
Naming convention for reports and dashboards will leverage sequence of periods (.) to help identify importance.
The following criteria are required for inbound SAOs:
0-Pending Acceptance to 1-Discovery by the Strategic Account Executive.10-DuplicateThe following criteria is required for a SDR to submit an opportunity to sales:
Authority The prospect being met is directly involved in a project or team related to the potential purchase of GitLab within this buying group, either as an evaluator, decision maker, technical buyer, or *influencer. *If the “influencer” is not directly involved (i.e. is related to a "decision maker" in another group/division or someone who is not directly tied to the opportunity at hand) the SDR will continue to own the opportunity and will seek to set-up the next meeting with a key contact in the buying group (leaving 0-pending status until date/referral is confirmed), updating the current opportunity with the new directly-involved point of contact in the buying group once it's acquired.
Initiative An initiative the company is working on has been identified and GitLab can potentially help the initiative. Identified by either a business problem (i.e too many tools), strategic direction or modernization interest (impetus to change).
Fit The following fields have been obtained:
Timing After the initial qualifying meeting with the account leader/executive, there must be a tangible next step scheduled with the prospect that is set to occur within a 60 day timeframe. (If next step isn’t within a 60 day timeframe, the opportunity remains in stage 0 and in SDR ownership to nurture until the next step is actualized.)
Sales Development best practice: Ask prospect about their environment, what they develop software for etc. to try build a picture of the company and how we will be able to help them. Share relevant resources with the point of contact. Add other potential influencers/buyers from that company into our database and the Outreach cadence in an effort to build more momentum within that organization.
Before the IQM with the account leader/executive, the SDR will also aim to gather:
Post IQM:
Opportunities in 1-Discovery stage are accepted and owned by the account leader/executive.
The account leader/executive is responsible for the progression, activities, engaging other resources, and converting this early engagement to a mutual win.
The Sales account leader/excutive is responsible for taking the next step within 60 days, or reverting the opportunity back to SDR ownership or disqualifying the SAO if ultimately there is no opportunity.
Managers should be able to use the 'NEXT STEP DATE' field to determine if the IQM has taken place but opportunity has not been moved to new stage.
Opportunities should be moved to new stage within 48 hours of IQM.
The following criteria are required for outbound SAOs:
0-Pending Acceptance to 1-Discovery by the Strategic Account Executive.10-DuplicateThe following criteria is required for a BDR to submit an outbound opportunity to sales:
Internal Decision-Making Unit and Procurement Process The prospect should be able to indicate a clear path to the decision maker, and to be able to identify other evaluators, technical buyer, or influencer in the decision making unit.
Identified Need An identified need in the company that is either actively worked on or not, identified by either a business problem (i.e too many tools), strategic direction or modernization interest (impetus to change).
Fit The following fields have been obtained:
Before the IQM with the account leader/executive, the BDR will also aim to gather:
These should be an approximation based on research and not necessarily verified.
Outbound BDR SAO Notes - Template
Post IQM:
Opportunities in 1-Discovery stage are accepted and owned by the account leader/executive.
The account leader/executive is responsible for the progression, activities, engaging other resources, and converting this early engagement to a mutual win.
The Sales account leader/excutive is responsible for taking the next step within 60 days, or reverting the opportunity back to BDR ownership or disqualifying the SAO if ultimately there is no opportunity.
Managers should be able to use the 'NEXT STEP DATE' field to determine if the IQM has taken place but opportunity has not been moved to new stage.
Opportunities should be moved to new stage within 48 hours of IQM.
An OPPORTUNITY can be created in Salesforce a) when converting a LEAD to CONTACT; b) from a CONTACT.
All opportunities should be created with a Stage = 0-Pending Acceptance regardless of how you create the OPPORTUNITY.
Once the initial setup is complete, the OPPORTUNITY Stage can updated based on the criteria below.
New Opportunity button. Required fields are:
New Business0-Pending Acceptance - starting stage for ALL opportunitiesSAVEContact Roles section, click New. CONTACTS associated to the ACCOUNT will be listed (up to 50 records). You must select a CONTACT as Primary and define the Role.
Account Owner (i.e. SAE/AM). Click Save.Initial Qualifying Meeting button. Enter the required fields (Start/End dates, Type) and update the description field with any notes the SAE/AM should have and review before taking the scheduled meeting.
Related to section for BOTH the CONTACT and the OPPORTUNITYAssigned to field to the OPPORTUNITY ownerSaveLead Status = Qualified. Click Save.Convert button:
Record Owner to the Account Owner (based on Rules of Engagement)Account Name (remove company suffix to avoid duplicates) - if unsure assign OPPORTUNITY to the "Parent" accountCONVERT
EditNew BusinessSAVEContact Roles section, the converted LEAD will automatically be set as "Primary". Click Edit and define the Role.
Role that need to be associated with the OPPORTUNITYAccount Owner (i.e. SAE/AM). Click Save.Initial Qualifying Meeting button. Enter the required fields (Start/End dates, Type) and update the description field with any notes the SAE/AM should have and review before taking the scheduled meeting.
Related to section for BOTH the CONTACT and the OPPORTUNITYAssigned to field to the OPPORTUNITY ownerAn Add-On OPPORTUNITY will inherit information from the original New Business OPPORTUNITY.
The steps to create an Add-on OPPORTUNITY varies slightly from the instructions above because this type of OPPORTUNITY is created from the New Business OPPORTUNITY not from a converted LEAD or CONTACT.
This creates a parent-child relationship between the original New Business OPPORTUNITY and the Add-on OPPORTUNITY.
New Business OPPORTUNITY (this will become the "parent" opp).
New Business OPPORTUNITY.New Add-on Opportunity button.Initial Source = see the definition table to choose the most correct source. It is important to be accurate as this does impact reporting and marketing attribution.0-Pending AcceptanceSaveWithin the parent-child OPPORTUNITY hierarchy some information will pass from the parent (New Business) to the child (Add-on). This information will be used in our reporting and analysis to track add-on business OPPORTUNITIES to their Initial Source and contributing team members.
There are additional validation rules that are presently in effect:
New Business or Renewal OPPORTUNITY.Add-on OPPORTUNITYAdd-on OPPORTUNITIES must have a parent opportunity.An Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY will inherit information from the original OPPORTUNITY.
The steps to create an Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY varies slightly from the instructions above because this type of OPPORTUNITY is created from the OPPORTUNITY not from a converted LEAD or CONTACT.
An Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY has a minimal amount of fields as it's only for tracking the potential upside amount.
This creates a parent-child relationship between the original OPPORTUNITY and the Upside IACV OPPORTUNITY.
Upside IACV button.SaveWhen the PARENT OPPORTUNITY is changed to "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost," please update the stage of the UPSIDE IACV OPPORTUNITY to "Duplicate." In order to save this change, you must also enter the PARENT OPPORTUNITY name in the "Duplicate Opportunity" field on the UPSIDE IACV OPPORTUNITY.
Note: Upside IACV opportunities exist for tracking purposes only. All final IACV (including any won upside IACV) will be attributed to the PARENT OPPORTUNITY.
A Professional Services OPPORTUNITY will be used to cover any integration, consulting, training or other service that a Sales rep will sell to a prospect/client and needs or wants to be invoiced separately.
To invoice separately a new quote and opportunity must be created.
A full list of professional services can be found here. See Working with Professional Services for workflow details.
Here is a video explaining the below process.
0-Pending AcceptanceProfessional Services OPPORTUNITY has the original OPPORTUNITY in the Parent Opportunity field. If this is not a validation rule error will occur while attempting to save the OPPORTUNITY.SaveOpportunity Teams section and click the Add button.Sales Qualified Source is dimension used when analyzing pipeline creation, lead conversion, sales cycles, and conversion rates. Sales Qualified Source may be different from the Lead Source of an Opportunity, which captures the original source (event, campaign, etc). For example, if a prospect originates from a trial (lead source), that prospect can be qualified by a SDR, Account Executive, Channel Partner, or the Web (sales qualified source).
The logic for the Sales Qualified Source is as follows:
Opportunities utilizing a reseller require slightly different data:
Lead/Contact: The partner record should be converted to their company channel type account. The end user record should be converted to the end user standard account type.
Opportunity Name: If the partner is an authorized reseller, rename the opportunity with the partner’s nickname in front, then a dash. For instance; if it is a Perforce deal, the opportunity name should start with P4 - (whatever your opportunity name is) This is important for the workflow that solicits updates from the reseller.
Account Name: It is important that opportunities using a reseller are created on the END CUSTOMER’s account, and not the reseller’s account. The account name on an opportunity is never a reseller. Resellers do not buy licenses; they purchase them on the behalf of an end customer. For instance, the account name field on an opportunity should never be SHI.
Opportunity Owner: The AE/SAE/Channel Manager who is working the deal with the reseller
Deal Registrant: The reseller who registered the deal.
Associating Contact Roles: After creating the opportunity, click “New” in the contact section to associate contacts with the opportunity.
Associating Partners to an Opportunity: After creating the opportunity, click “New” in the Partners section to associate the reseller with the opportunity.
Deal Registrar field in SFDC, This should be confirmed with the appropriate channel manager)Opportunity Team List: Add the reseller user to the Opportunity team list with the role of “Reseller” or else they cannot see the opportunity.
Opportunities for subscriptions will use the following guidelines:
Customer subscriptions will be moved to cancelled no more than 30 days after the subscription term end date, and the related Renewal Opportunity will be moved to Closed Lost.
Example:
| Opportunity | Stage | Net ARR | ARR Basis | ACV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Business 2020 | Closed Won | 100 | 0 | 100 |
| Renewal 2021 | Closed Won | 0 | 100 | 100 |
| Renewal 2022 | Closed Lost | -100 | 100 | 100 |
| Renewal 2022 | Closed Won | 0 | 100 | 100 |
| Renewal 2022 | Closed Lost (Debook) | 100 | -100 | -100 |
There are three things that can be new or existing:
That gives 4 types of opportunities:
New business is the combination of new account and new subscription
To help move sales through the sales process, here is a list of questions to ask at each stage
0-Pending Acceptance: This is the initial stage once an opportunity is created.
Amount field must be populated with estimated pipeline. The date the opportunity moves from this to the next stage in the sales cycle will populate the Sales Accepted Date field on the opportunity record.9-Unqualified stage (this is the only time an opportunity can move into 9-Unqualified stage)0-Pending Acceptance is only to be used if the renewal is not being actively worked by the Account Executive/Strategic Account Executive.1-Discovery: Uncover as much intelligence about the project as you can, which will be confirmed at later stages throughout the sales cycle.
Expected Number of Users and the Expected Product for the Opportunity. This information is used to help the customer success team to predict their future workload as well as to help them with their hiring plans.1-Discovery to the next stage (not 8-Closed Lost or 9-Duplicate), it will be considered a Sales Qualified Opportunity. The following values are entered once the opportunity progresses from this stage:
Sales Qualified is True.Sales Qualified Date is the date the opportunity moves from this stage to the next open or won stage.Initial IACV captures the value in the Incremental ACV field. Initial IACV is a snapshot field that will not change, even when the Incremental ACV field is updated and will be used for Deal Size analysis.2-Scoping: Uncover business challenges/objectives, the competitive landscape, realizing fit.
3-Technical Evaluation: Confirming technical requirements. A proof-of-concept (POC) might occur at this stage. This is also the stage to confirm information before a proposal is delivered.
4-Proposal: Business and technical challenges and been uncovered and resolved. A proposal is drafted and delivered to the prospect.
5-Negotiating: The prospect or customer has received the proposal and is in contract negotiations.
Referenceable Customer section on the Account object with appropriate reference information6-Awaiting Signature: The prospect or customer has verbally agreed to the terms and conditions outlined in the proposal and has submitted for signature.
Competitors and enter them on the opportunityClosed Won Reason and Closed Won Details (a brief summary of why we won the opportunity that supports your Closed Won Reason selection).Closed Won: Congratulations!! The terms have been agreed to by both parties and the quote has been approved by Finance.
8-Closed Lost: An opportunity was lost and the prospect/customer has decided not to pursue the purchase of GitLab.
Competitor fieldProduct Maturity: Product Line field.Closed Lost/Unqualified Details is required all opportunities with IACV of $1,000 or greater OR opportunities where Closed Lost Reason = Other. Enter as much detail as you can as to why we lost the deal. For example:
Closed Lost/Unqualified Reason is "Merged into another opportunity" please link this closed opportunity to the opportunity you are merging it into by using the Merged Opportunity lookup field. Otherwise, you will encounter a validation rule error.9-Unqualified: An opportunity was never qualified.
Closed Lost/Unqualified Reason and corresponding Closed Lost/Unqualified Details with any pertinent notes as to why the opportunity was not qualified.10-Duplicate: A duplicate opportunity exists in the system. This usually happens when a web direct opportunity is won when an existing opportunity already exists in Salesforce. Another reason could be multiple renewals created for the same opportunity. This stage should not be used when disqualifying an opportunity or if it is discovered at some point after acceptance that the opportunity is really part of a larger initiative. If the opportunity was accepted, it cannot be marked as a duplicate. Instead, you must mark the opportunity as 8-Closed Lost and select the appropriate reason. Possible selections could include "Consolidating order - part of another subscription" or "Merged into another opportunity" as reasons why a duplicate opportunity may have been created.
Duplicate Opportunity with the opportunity that this opportunity is a duplicate of. If this field is not populated you will encounter a validation rule error.Note that once you qualify an opportunity via our standard qualification process, you cannot revert an opportunity back to the following stages: 0-Pending Acceptance, or 9-Unqualified.
If you need to revert an opportunity you've previously qualified to one of these stages, please contact Sales Operations and we can determine why the opportunity (once qualified) is no longer qualified.
If a previously met criteria has become unmet, you are required to revert back to the latest stage where all activities were completed.
For example, if a prospect had previously signed off on GitLab from a technical standpoint, requested a quote and has begun contract negotiations, you would set the opportunity to 5-Negotiating.
However, if at any point during the negotiations, additional technical questions or requirements arise that result in a re-evaluation of GitLab's technical capabilities, you would revert the opportunity back to 3-Technical Evaluation.
After the opportunity has once again met the stage completion criteria, you are able to move the opportunity to either 4-Proposal if a new order form was created as a result of the additional technical requirements, or back to 5-Negotiating if no changes were made to the original order form.
To help keep our pipeline clean and ensure that early stage deals are moving through the pipe at the desired velocity, all New Business opportunities in stage 1-Discovery and 2-Scoping are governed under the below process
Timelines: Inactivity Warning Day & Auto Closure Day by Segment
Definitions: SFDC actions that constitute an activity include:
Process for Stage 1-Discovery:
8-Closed Lost) with a Closed Lost/Unqualified Reason of "No Progression-Auto Close"2-Scoping, the Warning and Auto Closure Day process starts overProcess for Stage 2-Scoping:
3-Technical Evaluation, there are no longer any activity requirements due to agingIn order to be in compliance with US Regulations there is a need to screen opportunities against known individuals and organizations with whom we are not allowed to do business. In order to comply with these regulations, opportunities are screened when they are created through a third party application, Visual Compliance. Visual Compliance is a dynamic screening tool that constantly compares our account information with those sanctioned parties listed on various Denied Party Lists. Visual Compliance will screen new information and will monitor existing information to ensure the integrity and legality of the parties with whom we do business. The more accurate information in the Account–the better! Partial information may trigger a false ‘hit’ and cause delays. Please provide the full company name, company address, country and contact name(s).
If you receive an error referencing export when attempting to update an Account: (i) Check if the Visual Compliance Section of the Account says “Pending”– Wait 15-30 minutes for the system to run its initial check and update. (ii) If the Visual Compliance Section of the Account says “Yellow” or“Red”– The legal team is manually reviewing the Account to ensure compliance. Manual reviews of hits are conducted three (3) times a day. Changes by Legal will automatically update the Account, although updates may take 15-30 minutes to sync.
Through the Executive Sponsor Program, we seek to:
The executive sponsor should:
Example Sponsor Activities
The CE Usage ping provides GitLab with some limited insight into how end users are utilizing the platform. The raw information is cleaned, enriched and then pushed to SFDC as an Account by the Data Team.
If there is not an existing account match in Salesforce, a new account record will be created with the following information populated:
| SFDC Field | Default Value |
|---|---|
| Account Name | |
| Account Source | CE Download |
| Number of Employees | |
| Billing Street | |
| Billing City | |
| Billing Zip | |
| Billing Country | |
| Account Type | Prospect - CE User |
| Account Website | |
| Industry | Populated by Clearbit (since been deprecated) |
| Active CE Users | Populated by Usage Ping |
| CE Instances | Populated by Usage Ping |
| Account Owner | Sales Admin by Default |
| Using CE | Checked True |
Process
Prospect - CE User accounts that fit their target segment(s). Accounts owned by Sales Admin can be adopted by a Sales Team member changing ownership in Salesforce.
The adoption of any Sales Admin owned records will trigger an email alert that is sent to the Account Research Specialist for transparency and awareness of what account records have been claimed.Prospect - CE User accounts on a regular basis to determine additional account records that should be worked either by a Sales Team member or Outbound BDR.Prospect - CE User account the same as any other known CE User account leveraging the tools at their disposal (Zoominfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, etc) to add contacts to the account record and populate the firmographic profile of the account.