1. Sales Organization
All sales are generated through a direct sales framework reliant on lead generation efforts, including trade shows, trade applications, email marketing, and online and print advertisements. This direct sales framework will continue to be in place. The sales team consists of two primary roles:
- External Sales Representatives
- Sales Account Managers
2. Leads, Prospects & Customers
In NetSuite, the customer entity is categorized into three phases: Lead, Prospect, and Customer. Customers transition through these phases either manually or by executing particular transactions:
- Creating an opportunity progresses the Lead record to the Prospect phase.
- Generating an order, invoice, or cash sale moves the Lead or Prospect record to the Customer phase.
Basic information about customers-including name, address, and phone number-is stored within the system.
3. Customer Hierarchy
A customer hierarchy (incorporating sub-customers) can also be developed and maintained within the application for leads, prospects, and customers. This structure permits independent management of all tiers. When sub-customers are utilized, payments must be accepted at the transaction customer level or at the parent level if “Accept Payments through Top-level Customer” is enabled in Accounting Preferences. When Subsidiaries are employed, this setting restricts sub-customer creation to the subsidiary and currency of the parent customer.
4. Routing and Assignment
A sales rule consists of a set of conditions that dictate how potential customers are assigned to sales representatives. In NetSuite, sales rules can be customized based on both standard and bespoke fields found on lead, prospect, and customer records, such as names, addresses, and phone numbers.
5. Contacts
Contacts are individuals with whom business relationships exist, including colleagues and other acquaintances that you would keep in an address book. In NetSuite, you can associate contacts with lead, prospect, customer, vendor, and partner records via the Contacts sub-tab. This enables anyone reviewing the record to access the necessary names, phone numbers, and email addresses for communication with other businesses.
6. Partners, Resellers and Distributors
In NetSuite, business arrangements with other entities can be classified into two primary categories:
Partners
A partner is an entity engaged in a business agreement with the company, neither classified as a customer nor a vendor.
Resellers and Distributors
Resellers/distributors are entities that acquire the company’s products with the intention of reselling them directly to consumers.
7. Customer Center
NetSuite offers a standard role to enable customer access to its data. A role encompasses a set of permissions that grants customers access to specific sections of NetSuite information. The Customer Center role allows customers to view their estimates, orders, invoices, and payments. This role can be tailored to modify the level of access customers possess in the center. For instance:
- Links to transactions or records can be omitted if necessary.
- Access can be restricted to viewing records and transactions only, instead of allowing edits or creation.
- Ensure a custom form is utilized when entering sales orders or processing payments in the center.
Customers log into their NetSuite account using the assigned email address and password unique to the Customer Center role. If individual logins for this customer’s contacts are needed, those individual contacts can also be granted access.
8. Sales Campaigns
Sales campaigns empower your sales representatives to dispatch email campaigns to their customers and monitor the responses, aiding them in better gauging customer interests. Sales representatives can utilize campaign response reports to assess each recipient’s reaction. This helps the representative identify which customers might find their offer appealing. Using campaigns to send offers to prospects, rather than employing email merge, gives representatives deeper insight into which recipients interacted with the email link. By examining the Campaign Responses Detail report, representatives can see each recipient and their respective responses, allowing them to identify prospects to follow up with.
9. Opportunities
In NetSuite, opportunities are utilized to manage negotiations with prospects or existing customers. Details related to the opportunity are recorded to provide a comprehensive view of the deal, encompassing activities, notes, messages, and competitor information. The status of the opportunity is monitored through customer statuses, with a final win/loss classification assigned upon the opportunity’s closure.
10. Quotes / Estimates
In NetSuite, an estimate transaction, commonly referred to as a quote, is a non-posted record of projected charges to a customer. An estimate may be printed, emailed, or faxed to the customer. Once the customer approves the estimate, it can be converted into a sales order, invoice, or cash sale. This transaction feature is available when the Estimates functionality is enabled at Setup > Company > Enable Features, on the Transactions sub-tab.
