How well do you understand the sales process in NetSuite?  Over the next several blog posts, we will be digging deeper into the sales process so we can have a well-rounded understanding of how sales work in NetSuite. But first, we need to understand some big-picture concepts. At the heart of the sales process in NetSuite is the interaction between two entities: the sales department at your company and potential customers. In this post, we’ll focus on understanding the sales department side.

Sales Teams

Depending on the size of your sales department, you may need to create sales teams in NetSuite instead of just having individually-working sales reps.

Enabling Team Selling

In order to have sales teams, you need to enable the Team Selling feature. To do that, navigate to Setup > Company > Enable Features > CRM. On this page, check the Team Selling box, and then save your changes.

Designating Sales Roles

A sales team is comprised of a collection of employees who are all involved in some way with the sales process. While a sales team would include sales reps, it certainly isn’t limited to sales reps. Before you can create a sales team, you need to create the sales roles you need and connect any employee who will be involved in sales with the appropriate role.

Navigate to Setup > Sales > Setup Tasks > CRM Lists > New and choose Sales Role. On this page, you will name and describe the new sales role. You will need to repeat this process for as many sales roles as you plan to use. Once you have created the sales roles you need, go to the employee records for the individuals whom these roles will be assigned to and choose the appropriate role under the Human Resources subtab of those records.

Creating a Sales Team

Once you have enabled Team Selling, created sales roles, and assigned those roles to specific employees, you are ready to create a sales team. Navigate to Setup > Sales > Sales Management > Sales Teams > New. Under the Create Sales Team page, you can name the team and choose the individuals who will comprise it.

In addition to choosing the team members, you will also designate the role of each member on the team (which is based on the sales role(s) that have been assigned to them); designate their access level; and determine their contribution percentage. The contribution percentage should reflect the varying amounts of work that each individual is responsible for on the team. Consequently, the contribution percentage is also the basis for how commission will be divided up among the team members.

Lead Routing

After creating your sales teams, you are ready to define sales territories based on designated sales rules. Sales territories are used to determine which sales reps/teams are assigned to which leads, a process known as lead routing.

Establishing Sales Rules

First, let’s take a look at establishing sales rules. The Help Center defines a sales rule as “a set of parameters for how NetSuite assigns potential customers to sales reps.” To set up these sales rules, go to Setup > Sales > Sales Management > Sales Rules > New. On this page, choose the field that you want the rule to apply to. Once you have selected the field, you will be taken to a new page where you can name your new rule, describe it, and set the criteria for it. The types of criteria you can set will be different depending on the type of field that the rule is based on.

For example, maybe you want to create a rule based on the field State. On the Customer Field Rule page you can set the criteria as “any of” or “none of” and then choose the states that you want the criteria to apply to.

Creating Sales Territories

Once you have sales rules, you can create sales territories that are based on some of those sales rules. To create a new sales territory, navigate to Setup > Sales > Sales Management > Sales Territories > New. Name and describe the new territory, and then select the rule(s) that you want to belong in this territory. You also need to specify whether a record would need to match the criteria in all the rules for this territory or whether a record that matches even just one of the rules is sufficient to land it in this sales territory.

After selecting the rules that apply to the new territory, assign a sales rep, sales team, or sales group to this territory using the Sales Rep field under the Lead Assignment subtab. Now whenever new leads are created in NetSuite, they will automatically be sorted into sales territories based on whether or not they meet the set criteria. And once they are in a specific sales territory, they will also automatically be assigned to the sales team associated with that sales territory.

Conclusion

In our next blog we will explore the customer side of sales in NetSuite to round out our understanding of the Sales Force Automation process. If this blog has been helpful, be sure to check out the related posts linked below. And don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list so you never miss a post!