Steal This Flow: Salesforce Opp Creation that doesn’t suck
Why You Need a Custom Opportunity Flow
Welcome to another edition of Steal This Flow! Today, we’re tackling what I consider one of the original sins of Salesforce: the cumbersome, outdated opportunity creation process.
Whether you’re a customer success manager (CSM) or in the middle of a selling motion, you’ve probably experienced the frustrations of creating a new opportunity in Salesforce. You hit the dreaded pop-up modal, frantically hunting for the right fields, hoping not to trigger a validation rule. Once through that ordeal, you’re still left with extra steps—linking contacts, attaching products—making the whole process feel inefficient.
Salesforce’s Missed Opportunity: People Matter
We don’t sell to organizations; we sell to people within organizations. Yet, Salesforce’s default opportunity creation flow doesn’t reflect this reality. Disentangling opportunities from the people involved feels like driving a car without a gas pedal—everything’s there, but it’s not going anywhere.
That’s why I advocate for a custom opportunity creation flow. This customized approach ensures sellers and CSMs are only required to input essential information for a viable opportunity record. All the other data should be automatically populated, and users should quickly connect contacts to the opportunity in a single step.
A Simple, Efficient Solution
Let me walk you through how this works. When a new opportunity is created, the flow should bring up only the most critical fields: opportunity name, type, amount, close date, and next steps. This isn’t just about minimizing fields—it's about building dynamic forms that adapt to each stage of the sales cycle. Whether you’re at the meeting-booked stage or qualifying a demo, you only see what’s relevant.
The beauty of this system is in its flexibility. You can hide or show fields depending on the picklist values, providing a highly dynamic experience that saves sellers time and reduces data-entry errors.
Aligning Contacts with Opportunities
Once the core opportunity is created, the next step is critical: associating the right people with the opportunity. Instead of leaving this to chance, we immediately direct the user to select the contacts they’ve been interacting with at that account. These are the people you’re selling to, and it’s essential to link them to the opportunity in the system. This step ensures that everyone’s aligned on who’s involved in the deal.
When you hit “Next,” the flow automatically creates those opportunity contact records, tying them to the right opportunity. It’s simple, efficient, and ensures you have a full picture of the people involved in the deal.
Automating the Back End
For those who want to dive into the technical side, this process is relatively straightforward. The flow involves retrieving records, using screens to gather and display information, and looping through selected contacts to create opportunity contact roles. The process uses basic Salesforce screen flow components, alongside some automation tricks, to make it all work smoothly.
Once we’ve collected the necessary contact info, we store them in a record collection and create the opportunity contact roles. It’s efficient, minimizes error, and—most importantly—keeps the opportunity connected to the people driving it forward.
Why This Matters
At the end of the day, this custom flow is about more than just making life easier for your sales team. It ensures that opportunities aren’t just floating in Salesforce, detached from the people that matter. You’re selling to individuals, and this process makes that clear. It creates a seamless experience where opportunities are truly connected to the right contacts, helping your team stay organized and focused.
What’s Next?
Next time, we’ll dive deeper into associating contacts directly from tools like Gong. Imagine automatically pulling in contact details from a conversation and linking them to your opportunity in Salesforce. Stay tuned for more on that!
If you have any questions or suggestions for future Flow of the Day features, feel free to reach out at alex@fabricantgtm.com or visit us at fabricantgtm.com. We're here to help you streamline your revenue operations and create efficient, personalized solutions that work for your team.
