topic Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

FMontag — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 17:51:21 GMT

Hi all,

I have a question about best practices on how to handle deals which are "on-hold" within your sales pipeline.

The use-case is that we work with a lot of SME's as prospects who can be quite on-and-off due to seasonality and other reasons. Today we have a a "on-hold" stage for deals where we get the feedback that they need to stop the current process and can only resume in 3-6 months. However, this is not ideal for tracking the progression in the pipeline.

What would be your best practices and recommendations? Should we keep the deals in the pipeline stage and work with forecast categories to make sure that they do not impact the current forecasting? Or would you put the deal as lost if there is more than 3-6 months of a break and set-up a task to pick up the conversation in that timeframe?

Thanks a lot and best regards,

Florian

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

Jnix284 — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 16:07:16 GMT

Hi @FMontag happy to help get the conversation started! I have a few ideas, but think the simplest solution might be to create an On Hold pipeline, you can move any of the deals from your main pipeline to the On Hold pipeline where it has it's own stages relevant to the hold process. Once it is active again, it can be moved back to the main pipeline and accounted for in your forecasting, etc. You can create separate reports for the hold pipeline that would allow you to see more details about potential deals that might impact your forecast, etc.

@jolle any thoughts regarding deals that need to be put on hold for 3-6 months?

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

jolle — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:19:39 GMT

Thanks for the mention, @Jnix284! And great question, @FMontag!

I'm on board with Jennifer's suggestion of creating a separate "On Hold" pipeline for deals like these. That will allow you to pull out deals from your main pipeline that will skew progression data and may also help you uncover trends and optimization opportunities for your on hold deals!

If creating a separate pipeline isn't an option, the closed/lost process you mentioned should work:

Move the deal to closed/lost
Set the "Closed/Lost Reason" to "On Hold" or something like that
Ensure that the rep creates tasks to follow up in the apppropriate timeframe (and you can supplement these with automated tasks and reminder emails)
Ensure that you're staying top-of-mind for these leads and including them in all applicable email nurturing opportunities
Create a workflow that will send you/the team an internal notification if a deal has been sitting in the same stage for too long (you can define this, but maybe 30+ days or so) so that it can be moved accordingly

Hope this helps!!

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

FMontag — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:37:09 GMT

I will create a new pipeline for on-hold deals that makes most sense. Thanks a lot for your support!

Best,

Florian

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

FMontag — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:37:31 GMT

I will create a new pipeline for on-hold deals that makes the most sense. Thanks a lot for your support!

Best,

Florian

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

RPopovich — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 21:44:10 GMT

That is a great question. I like the idea of creating an "On Hold" pipeline, but I do get a little wary of managing multiple pipelines. Another option would be to levearge a Status property on the deal record. I don't like the idea of creating a Deal Stage "On Hold" - this is not a "Stage" of a deal, but rather a status. If you were to keep your Deal Stages as they are, and leverage a Status property to tag "On Hold" deals, this will allow for you to see where deals are in the pipeline that are "On Hold". This will also enable you to see which deal stages has the most "On hold". You can also create filters to remove Deal in your view that have the Status of "On Hold". When it comes to revenue reporting you can also create a Custom Report to remove any deals from your revenue reports that have a Status of "On Hold". With knowing very little of your sales process, this would be my recommendation.

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

Jnix284 — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 23:46:55 GMT

@RPopovich the On Hold status is a really great idea, especially when combined with filtered views! Thanks for sharing this insight with all of us 🙂

Re: How do you handle "On-hold" deals in your sales pipeline

CSM — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:00:33 GMT

Hi @jolle, Closed/Lost seems like just moving around a shell game for deals on hold, and then you have to create a new deal of the same. Now if you're looking at lost deals, it also clouds the information as these really aren't lost, just delayed. Is there way to create a stage called Hold in the pipeline that stops the active deal time counter, but still keeps visibility in the pipeline at all in that Hold stage?