How to create and leverage opportunities in Affinity

Overview

1. What is an opportunity?
2. How do I create an opportunity?
3. How to leverage opportunity lists
4. How to use enriched fields and global fields from organizations in your opportunity lists
5. 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 unique combination of specific people and/or organizations for a particular purpose. The video below provides a quick overview of a "Limited Partners" opportunity list.

Note: Update for 01:18 in the video above - enriched fields and global fields from organization lists are now available in opportunity lists as well (sheet view only).However, enriched fields and global fields from people lists will not show up in opportunity lists.

Opportunities are particularly useful for Venture Capital and Investment Banking firms that invest in or track the same company across multiple rounds or for different purposes, respectively.

• For Venture Capital customers, the opportunity names in your "Dealflow" list can look like the following:
  • Company A - Series A
  • Company A - Series B
  • Company B - Series A
  • Company B - Series B
• For Investment Banking customers, the opportunity names in your "Buyers" list can look like the following:
  • Company XYZ - Buyer A
  • Company XYZ - Buyer B
  • Company 123 - Buyer A
  • Company 123 - Buyer B

How do I create an opportunity?

First, create a new opportunity list (see How to create a new list in Affinity). If you don't see the option to create a new opportunity list after clicking Build from scratch, then email support@affinity.co and we'd be happy to help.

Once you create a new opportunity list, you can create an opportunity in three different ways:

1. Click the + icon on the top navigation bar.
   
   
   
2. Click the blue + button within the opportunity list itself.
   
   
   
3. Click the + icon on a contact's profile page next the the Opportunities section.
   
   
   

How to leverage opportunity lists

1. Track multiple opportunities tied to one 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.
     
     
4. Leverage the enriched fields and global fields coming from organization lists.
   • You can also create custom list-specific fields that are unique to each opportunity (see How to create a new column in a list).
     
     
     

How to use enriched fields and global fields from organizations in your opportunity lists

When an opportunity is associated with only one organization under the default Organizations field, you will begin to see the enriched fields and global fields from organization lists auto-populate with values corresponding to that particular organization.

1. Click on Customize View to display the enriched fields and global fields you'd like to see.
   • They can be easily distinguished by the organization badge on the right-side of the screen.
     
     
     
   • They will also appear when you attempt to create a new column in your opportunity list.
     
     
2. You can hover over these enriched fields and global fields to see that they're connected to the default Organizations field.
   
   
   
3.  Within these enriched fields and global fields, you can edit, filter, and sort these fields like you normally would in organization lists.
   • Editing at the cell level
     
     
     
   • Filtering at the column level
     
     
     
   • Sorting at the column level
     
     
4. Current Limitations
   1. Enriched fields and global fields from organization lists will only be available on sheet view in opportunity lists.
      1. They will not surface in the Affinity mobile app.
      2. They will not appear in board views or dashboard views.
   2. Values will only appear if there is only one organization associated with the opportunity under the default Organizations field.
      1. If there is no organization associated with the opportunity, then no values will appear.
      2. If there are two or more organizations associated with the opportunity, then no values will appear.
         
         
         
   3. Enriched fields and global fields from organization lists cannot be mapped to when importing into an opportunity list. The workaround for now would be to import into an organization list instead.
       

Understanding the benefits and limitations of opportunity lists

Benefits

• You can name the opportunity whatever you want.
  • Name it by the organization name itself: Uber
  • Name it by a round: Uber - Series A
  • Name it by a particular opportunity: Uber - Company X
• The enriched fields and global fields from your organization lists can be leveraged in your opportunity lists as well.
• You can associate any unique combinations of people and/or organizations to each opportunity.
  
  • Example: "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 auto-enriched only based on who is in the default 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 associate just 2 out of the 100 people because they are specifically designated as main points of contact for this particular opportunity.
    
    
    

Limitations

• The enriched fields or global fields from people lists will not be available in opportunity lists (see Fields: Enriched, Global, and List-specific).
• Even though the Notes and Reminders fields are colored in blue within opportunity lists, they will still be treated as list-specific fields. This means that any notes or reminders assigned to an opportunity will not carry over to the people and/or organizations that are associated with the opportunity.