Revenue expansion (or account expansion) is one of the two leading indicators of success for the customer success managers (CSMs)—the other one being reducing the churn rate (i.e, retaining more customers). 


The ability for CSMs to track upsell and cross-sell opportunities on Freshdesk Customer Success makes it easier to forecast pipeline, follow deal progress, and more efficiently achieve annual revenue targets. Not to mention saving costs on having to buy additional CRM licenses.


With Deal Management, CSMs can create, view, and track cross-sell and upsell opportunities through every deal stage right from Freshdesk Customer Success. This deal data is pushed into the CRM and auto-synced, helping teams better track expansion revenue targets, close deals faster, and drive greater revenue efficiency. 


Actions taken on a deal in the CRM will be synced back to Freshdesk Customer Success so your team can track the deal stages. This reduces errors in data entry for consistent and accurate reporting.



Benefits of Deal Management

  1. Track and measure expansion opportunities created by the CS team and more efficiently achieve annual revenue targets.

  2. Reduces errors and ensures accurate reporting.

  3. Saves costs on CRM licenses for CSMs.

  4. A seamless and streamlined experience by not having to switch between two systems (Freshdesk Customer Success and your CRM).


Create and manage deals in Freshdesk Customer Success


Navigate to the account where you had like to log an opportunity — i.e, create a deal. 


1. Navigate to the Account360 page where the deal needs to be created and click on the Deals tab. 




2. Click on +Add deal. In the slider that opens on the right, enter the deal details and click on Add deal.



3. If the deal creation on the CRM system happens successfully, the Sync status value will be set to Success.



Note

  1. The Deal Management feature

    1. provides visibility into customer deals to the CSMs by syncing those deals from your CRM to Freshdesk Customer Success.

    2. allows CSMs to capture new deals from renewal/upsells by syncing deals from Freshdesk Customer Success to your CRM so they can be tracked and followed through in the CRM — provided the reverse sync with the CRM has been set up.

  2. If the reverse sync with the CRM has been set up, but the sync hasn’t yet happened between Freshdesk Customer Success and CRM, then the Sync status value will be set to Pending

  3. There is a possibility that the deal has not been created on the CRM and the sales rep is still not informed of this cross-sell or upsell opportunity. In such cases, check the Sync Status once after the reverse sync time duration has elapsed. If the sync status still shows up as ‘pending’, then it means that the deal wasn’t created and you can try again.

  4. ‘Success’ and ‘pending’ are the only two sync statuses for deals that are created in Freshdesk Customer Success. Deals that were created in the CRM and synced with Freshdesk Customer Success will display the Sync Status value, ‘Created in CRM’.




FAQ on managing deals in Freshdesk Customer Success


  1. A deal was created in error and needs to be edited or deleted. How can this be done?


Since your CRM remains the source of truth for tracking and managing deals, any edits/changes to the deal can be corrected in the CRM once the deal that was created on Freshdesk Customer Success is synced over to your CRM. After the sync, the corrections made on the CRM will be synced back to Freshdesk Customer Success. If the opportunity needs to be deleted, then the same has to be done on your CRM and the changes will get synced back to Freshdesk Customer Success. The reverse sync with your CRM needs to be set up for this flow to work. (ii) Once a deal has been created in Freshdesk Customer Success, it cannot be edited in Freshdesk Customer Success. It can only be edited in your CRM.


Important Notes


(i) The source of truth for tracking and managing deals is the CRM, and not Freshdesk Customer Success.


(ii) In the current version of Deal Management, Freshdesk Customer Success is to be used only to communicate identified deal opportunities to the CRM. The deals are not intended to be managed in Freshdesk Customer Success. Once deals are created in Freshdesk Customer Success and are synced with the CRM, they should be updated and managed there.


(iii) In continuation of the previous point, a one-way sync can be set up to push deals from the CRM to Freshdesk Customer Success for CSM visibility, or


(iv) A two-way sync between CRM and Freshdesk Customer Success can be set up so that CSMs not only have visibility but also can help identify and communicate potential opportunities back to the CRM.



View Deals


1. Navigate to the Reports tab and select Deals to view the Deals list page.


2. Select a segment to get clear visibility into the expansion pipeline — filter, sort, search, export, and create views of Deals to know which ones are progressing and which ones need follow-up with the account management and sales teams. A quick summary of the pipeline is available on the right pane.





Create Deal list views: After entering the filters to get the information important to you, create custom deal views in Freshdesk Customer Success by clicking on Save as and naming the list. Make the most out of deal management in Freshdesk Customer Success to effectively manage your deals in one place.




Three quick lists will be available by default → All dealsRecent deals, and Closing this week




3. You can also navigate to the desired account (the Account360 page) and click on the Deals tab. A list of deals in the CRM for this account is displayed. 


Note: These deals are not all necessarily created on Freshdesk Customer Success. It just shows a list of all the deals created under this account as it exists on the CRM. Thus, Freshdesk Customer Success enables the creation of deals from Freshdesk Customer Success to the CRM, and allows CSMs to view the deals that the sales reps have created on the CRM.






If the account being viewed is a parent account, then turning on the Hierarchal rollup will display a list of all the deals across the child and the current parent account.




Note: The Hierarchical rollup option shows up only on parent accounts. 



Setting up Deal Management


Admins can set up deal management and unlock time and cost savings for their teams as their CSMs spend less time toggling between the CRM and Freshdesk Customer Success to follow-up on opportunities by tracking them right from Freshdesk Customer Success.


Our CSM/ onboarding team will help configure the deal management sync between your CRM and Freshdesk Customer Success.



Here are the steps to set up deal management for your team:

1. Navigate to Management Center under Settings (click on the gear icon on the left bar).




2. Click on the Manage Fields tab. Click on the Deal fields. A list of default fields will be available. 


Note: New fields cannot be added under Deal fields since these fields on Freshdesk Customer Success are directly mapped to the fields in the CRM.





3. Click on Edit to make changes to the field. Note that these to be mapped one-to-one with the CRM system. 





List of metrics available on Chart Explorer


  • # of deals created
  • # of deals closed
  • Age (in days) of open deals
  • Age (in days) of closed deals
  • Deal value (total amount of deals)