Quarra Opportunity Approval Workflow Redesign

Overview

In December 2025, Quarra and Asymmetric agreed to redesign the Salesforce opportunity approval workflow. The previous process required Lincoln Durham to approve opportunity creation, creating a bottleneck. The new design empowers sales reps to create opportunities immediately while preserving management oversight before committing to active pursuit.

The full workflow design was tabled for a dedicated follow-up call, but the core structure was agreed upon in this session.

Problem with the Old Process

Lincoln was a required approver before a rep could even create an opportunity in Salesforce. This slowed down the early information-gathering stage and meant opportunities were sometimes not logged at all while waiting for approval.

"I no longer want to be in a position where I have to approve of the creation of the opportunity."
— Lincoln Durham

New Workflow Design

The redesigned process has three phases:

Opportunity Creation (no approval required)
Reps create the opportunity immediately upon identifying a potential deal — including for existing relationships. No gate at this stage.
Information Gathering
The rep works the opportunity through early stages, collecting the details needed to evaluate whether to pursue it. The opportunity can exist and be worked without management sign-off.
Approval Gate Before "Pursuit" Stage
A hard lock prevents advancing the opportunity to the "Pursuit" stage until approval is granted. This is where Lincoln (or another approver) evaluates whether the opportunity aligns with strategic goals — e.g., 2026 targets.

Qualifier Milestone

A qualifier checkpoint will be added to the workflow to formally assess alignment with annual goals before pursuit is approved. If approved, the opportunity advances. If not, it is routed to a separate outcome (e.g., deprioritized or closed).

Key Decisions

Reps can create opportunities without any prior approval
The approval gate moves to the transition into "Pursuit" — not opportunity creation
A qualifier milestone will check alignment with 2026 goals
Lincoln will send a whiteboard screenshot of the sales process to Karly for reference

Action Items

[ ] Lincoln to send whiteboard screenshot of sales process to Karly
[ ] Lincoln to prep internally before next call; discuss with team
[ ] Karly and Mark to review and refine the Salesforce flow diagram internally
[ ] Full workflow discussion to continue on next scheduled call

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