How to Manage Lost Opportunities in CRM for Better Sales Strategy

Managing lost opportunities is essential to maintaining a clean pipeline and refining your sales strategy. This guide covers how to mark opportunities or leads as lost, restore them, and manage lost reasons in the Odoo CRM application.

Lost Opportunities

Not every opportunity results in a successful sale. To keep the pipeline up-to-date, lost opportunities need to be identified. Specifying why an opportunity was lost helps identify recurring issues, reveal coaching opportunities, and can assist with improving overall sales strategy.

Note
Merging lost opportunities with active ones will pull them back into the pipeline.

Mark an Opportunity as Lost

1. Open the CRM app.
2. Select an opportunity from the pipeline by clicking on its corresponding Kanban card to reveal its detail form.
3. Click Lost, located at the top of the opportunity’s detail form.

   This opens the Mark Lost pop-up window.

4. From the Lost Reason drop-down menu, choose an existing reason.
   • To create a new one, type it into the Lost Reason field and click Create.
5. Add additional notes or comments in the Closing Note field.

Tip
Neither the Lost Reason nor the Closing Note fields are required, but it’s recommended to include them for traceability, accountability, and reporting.

6. Click Mark as Lost.

After doing so, a red Lost banner is added to the upper-right corner of the opportunity.

Note
To mark an inactive (archived) opportunity as lost, set the Probability field to 0%.

Create or Edit Lost Reasons

To manage lost reasons:

1. Navigate to CRM app ‣ Configuration ‣ Lost Reasons.
2. To edit an existing reason:
   • Click the reason to highlight it.
   • Edit the Description field.
3. To create a new lost reason:
   • Click New.
   • Enter the new reason in the Description field.

View Lost Opportunities

1. Go to CRM app ‣ Sales ‣ My Pipeline.
2. Click the search bar at the top and remove all default filters.
3. Open the Filters drop-down menu by clicking the dropdown icon next to the search bar.
4. Under the Filters column, select Lost.

Only opportunities marked as Lost will now appear on the Pipeline page.

Sort Opportunities by Lost Reason

1. Click the dropdown icon next to the search bar to open the filter menu.
2. Under Filters, click Add Custom Filter.

   In the Add Custom Filter window:

   • First field: select Lost Reason.
   • Second field: select =.
   • Third field: choose a lost reason from the dropdown.
   • Click Add.

Tip
To view multiple lost reasons, choose the operator is in in the second field. You can then select more than one reason in the third field.

Restore Lost Opportunities

1. Open CRM app ‣ Sales ‣ My Pipeline.
2. Click the dropdown icon next to the search bar and select Lost.

Tip
Remove the My Pipeline filter to see all opportunities.

3. Open the lost opportunity’s detail form.
4. Click Restore in the upper-left corner.

This removes the red Lost banner and restores the opportunity.

Restore Multiple Opportunities at Once

1. In CRM app, select the Lost filter from the Filters dropdown.
2. Switch to List View (click the list icon in the upper-right corner).
3. Select the checkbox next to each opportunity to restore.
4. Click the Actions dropdown.
5. Choose Unarchive.

These opportunities will be removed from the Lost filter view and reappear in the pipeline.

Manage Lost Leads

If Leads are enabled, they can be marked as lost using the same process as opportunities. Leads also share the same Lost Reasons configuration.

Note
To enable leads, go to CRM app ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings, and check the Leads option. This adds a Leads menu to the header.

Mark a Lead as Lost

1. Navigate to CRM app ‣ Leads.
2. Select a lead to open its detail form.
3. Click Lost at the top of the form.

   The Mark Lost pop-up will appear.

4. Choose a Lost Reason from the dropdown or create a new one.
5. Optionally, add a Closing Note.
6. Click Mark as Lost.

Restore Lost Leads

1. Go to CRM app ‣ Leads.
2. Open the Filters dropdown and select Lost.
3. Click on a lost lead to open its detail form.
4. Click Restore in the upper-left corner.

This removes the Lost banner and restores the lead.

Restore Multiple Leads at Once

1. Navigate to CRM app ‣ Leads.
2. Open the Filters menu and select Lost.
3. Select the checkbox beside each lead to restore.
4. Click the Actions dropdown and choose Unarchive.

This will remove the selected leads from the Lost filter view.