How to create and leverage opportunities in Affinity

1. What is an opportunity?
2. How do I create an opportunity?
3. How to leverage opportunity lists
4. Understanding the benefits and limitations of opportunity lists

What is an opportunity?

While there are people and organization contacts in Affinity, opportunity contacts are special hybrids that can hold any number of specific people and/or organizations for a particular purpose. The screenshot below shows an example of a "Limited Partners" opportunity list that supports a combination of specific people and/or organization contacts.

Opportunities are particularly useful for enterprise sales teams and VC firms that commonly invest in the same company across multiple rounds and/or for different purposes. For example, the opportunity names can be "Company A - Series A", "Company A - Series B", "Company A - Series C", etc.

How do I create an opportunity?

First, create a new opportunity list (see How to create a new list in Affinity). Then, you can create an opportunity in three different ways:

1. Click the + icon on the top navigation bar.
   
   
   
2. Click the blue "+" button in an opportunity list.
   
   
   
3. Click the + icon on a contact's profile page.
   
   
   

How to leverage opportunity lists

1. Track multiple opportunities tied to an organization
   - Track the communication history with the specific stakeholders for each individual opportunity associated with an organization.
   
   
2. Track communication with stakeholders at large organizations
   - While an organization’s contact page will show the entire history of communication between individuals at your firm and the organization, opportunities will help you easily access and track the communication history with the specific individuals associated with the opportunity.
   
   
3. Track of the value and amount of a deal
   - See which team member is the point of contact for the opportunity and where it is in your pipeline using the default Status field. NOTE: Win probabilities for the Status column are only available in opportunity-type lists. Win probabilities come in handy when leveraging the Forecast Report.

Along with these default fields, you can create custom fields with any other information that is crucial to your firm’s pipeline. Below is a screenshot with sample data to show what an opportunity list might look like:

Understanding the benefits and limitations of opportunity lists

Benefits

• You can name the opportunity whatever you want.
  • Name it by the name: Uber
  • Name it by a round: Uber - Series A
• You can associate any unique combinations of people and/or organizations to each opportunity.
  • If a Limited Partner list consisted of angel investors (individual people) and organizations, you can specify (see below).
  • JP Morgan Chase is the name of an opportunity that has an organization and two people associated with it, while Sophia Parsons is the name of another opportunity that only has one person associated with it.
• The smart columns First Email, Last Email, Last Meeting, Last Contact, and Next Meeting are automatically enriched based on who is entered into the People column for each opportunity.
  • This siphons out unwanted communications from other people that are otherwise associated with organizations in organization lists.
  • Example: If JP Morgan Chase was in an organization list, there may be 100 people associated under the People column because me and my team know about 100 people at JP Morgan Chase. However, I can choose to associate JP Morgan Chase as an organization to an opportunity named JP Morgan Chase, then specifically associate 2 out of the 100 people because they are specifically designated as main points of contact for a different purpose.
    
    
    

Limitations

• You cannot leverage Crunchbase data within an opportunity list.
  • This is because you can deliberately choose to associate multiple organizations to each opportunity. Crunchbase columns are designed to display data from one organization at a time.
• You cannot leverage global fields from your people lists and organization lists (see What are Global Fields vs List-specific Fields?).
  • Opportunity lists can only consist of list-specific fields. Even the Notes and Reminders column in your opportunity lists will be list-specific.
  • Just as how Crunchbase columns are designed to display data by one organization at a time, global fields are designed to display data by one organization/person at a time.