In Zoho CRM, deals represent individual revenue-generating opportunities within your sales pipeline. Each deal tracks a potential sale from initial qualification through to closure, giving your team a clear, structured way to manage and forecast revenue. The Deals module is central to understanding your sales pipeline and forecasting future income.

What Is a Deal?

A deal is a record that captures the details of a specific sales opportunity, including the potential value, the stage it has reached in your pipeline, and the expected close date. Deals are typically linked to contacts and accounts, providing full context around who you are selling to and which organisation is involved.

Creating Deals

You can add deals to Zoho CRM in the following ways:

• Manual entry: Create individual deal records directly within the Deals module, completing the required fields at the point of creation.
• Import: Bring in multiple deal records at once using a CSV or XLS file, which is useful when migrating pipeline data from another system.
• Lead conversion: When a qualified lead is converted, Zoho CRM can automatically generate a deal record alongside the new contact and account.

Standard Deal Fields

The Deals module includes several standard fields to capture the key details of each opportunity:

• Deal Owner: The CRM user responsible for progressing this opportunity.
• Deal Name: A required field that identifies the opportunity. This is typically named after the product or service being sold, combined with the account name.
• Account Name: Links the deal to the relevant company account.
• Stage: Indicates where the deal currently sits in your sales process, such as Prospecting, Proposal, Negotiation, or Closed Won.
• Amount: The monetary value of the deal, used for pipeline reporting and forecasting.
• Close Date: The anticipated or actual date on which the deal is expected to close.
• Probability: A percentage likelihood of closing the deal, which feeds into weighted pipeline forecasts.

Team Selling and Deal Split

For organisations where multiple team members contribute to winning a deal, Zoho CRM supports team selling and deal split functionality. This allows you to assign a deal to a team and allocate revenue credit across contributing members. Deal split is available on the following editions: Enterprise, Ultimate, CRM Plus, and Zoho One Enterprise. With deal split enabled, each team member's contribution can be tracked and reflected in individual performance reports and commission calculations.

Deal Management Best Practices

• Keep deal stages updated in real time so that your pipeline view accurately reflects the current state of each opportunity.
• Use Zoho CRM's Kanban view to visualise deals by stage and quickly identify bottlenecks or stalled opportunities.
• Link all relevant activities, emails, and notes to deal records to maintain a complete audit trail of the sales journey.
• Use forecasting tools to project expected revenue based on deal stage and probability, supporting more accurate business planning.