Hey all!
First post here! 
Iām analyzing our lost deals and therefore looking into where in the sales process we lose deals. We have data on the last deal stage before a deal becomes Lost, but Iām curious if any of you have information on (SaaS) benchmarks on this - or can link me to any valuable reports?
Looking forward to your input! Thanks!!
Best,
Lisette
Hi @Lisette1,
Thank you for reaching out to us!
When looking at your deal stage process it is important to evaluate both your wins and losses. The reasoning behind a loss can help clean your pipelines, focus on those deals that can bring in potential revenue and fine-tune your process.
When it comes to finding out the why behind a closed/loss this will vary from business to business. A procedure that I have seen a business implement is requiring to add the reason that the deal is lost. You can achieve this by going into settings > objects > deals > pipelines, and beside the Deal probability column - you will find a column with UPDATE STAGE PROPERTIES - go to the last stage of the deal which in this case is āclosed lostā hover over it - you will find a tab āEdit propertiesā once you click on it and check the box āclosed lost reasonā required for that stage - this will basically make the āclosed lost reasonā mandatory and once move the deal to the stage āclosed lostā the pop-up box to enter the reason will appear.
You also have the option of creating a new property/custom property, if you do not wish to use the ones that are already set up. You can follow the steps in this Knowledge Base Article here. This would allow you to report on the stage itself and determine to see if there are any trends that exist.
Best,
Thanks for your reply @JenWeiss !
We already have closed lost reason as a (mandatory) dropdown field and also an extra open field property for explanation on that reason.
Itās not that, what I want to uncover is - letās say for all lost deals 40% had āfirst deal stageā as the last deal stage, before becoming a lost deal, 50% had āsecond deal stageā as the last deal stage and 10% had āthird deal stageā as the last deal stage before becoming a lost deal. Is any of these numbers worrying or is this ānormalā?
I know companies have different number of deal stages and different naming for deal stages obviously but Iām wondering if there is any information (benchmarks even maybe) on how to interpret this.
Best,
Lisette
Hi @Lisette1,
Good question. Maybe some of these people can help: @NicoleSengers, @AHudson, @Drew_Cohen, @GrantCarlile, @RSiddula
Thanks @jbogaert, curious to hear any input from them!
We have a field named āLast Deal Stageā that is tied to a workflow, that updates that field with the current deal stage up until the deal is Closed Won or Closed Lost. That way, we can see which stage the deals were at directly before they were closed. It has been extremely helpful to see where deals drop off, and overlay that on top of ātime in deal stageā to score how hot, cold or at risk a deal might be.