Question

How do you handle Wrong Timing?

  • 5 May 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 12 views

I’m curious how folks handle opportunities that are a great fit but want you to follow up in the future? I don’t want to have inactive deals sitting in the pipeline, but I don’t want to lose the opportunity.

Our solution was to set up a “Re-engage” pipeline for such opportunties, but not sure about the best practice here. Thanks!


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I mean wrong timing is a loss reason.

Set it up as such, mark it as a loss, label it as that, and just set up a task to follow-up in 3-6 months or something using the workflow automation.

That's what we do at least, although normally we're learning this before even marking them as an opportunity (they are still a lead, since wrong timing is usually they aren't yet qualified and pretty obvious out of the gate).

In that case, it's a lead status (e.g. Not Yet Ready)

It's just when you're reporting, you're going to have all of these open opportunities and forecasting and everything when really, more often than not, a "not ready yet" usually results in them not buying.

Just get creative with filtered views "show me not ready yet/re-engage" and in the filtered view you can just have it show "lost" opportunities with a tag of re-engage or something.

It's just better to not have random pipeline stages with stagnant opportunities, the goal is to move opportunities from left to right, and having say the rightmost stage as a "holding" stage is just a confusing process.

We've written a bit about best practices around the Opportunity Pipeline here.

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