Mandatory reason for Pushing Deals

[ArtyCele]

Hi there community,

Apologies if this is a simple fix but thought I'd ask if anyone has encoutered this before.

We currently have reps pushing deals at the last moment without any reason or notes which makes it incredibly hard for us to make accurate forecasting. Is there a way to create a conditional logic or workflow where: if the the close date is pushed/moved to the future, they would have to then fill in a mandatory multi-line text field called "pushed reasons"?

Thanks again for your help!

[danmoyle]

@ArtyCele when you say push, can you clarify? Are they pushing the deal to a different stage? Or just leaving them in so they're overdue? 

[ArtyCele]

Hi @danmoyle , thanks for your assistance in this.

By push I mean they are moving the close date forwards to the future, usually this happens just before the deal is supposed to close and what we'd like to do is basically have a logical process of:
-If close date is moved to the future 

-Have required multi-line text field "Push Forwards Reason"

-Insert mandatory reason in "Push Forwards Reason" required field 

This would be a field that would be triggered/shown in case they move the close date forwards.

Please do let me know if that makes sense or more than happy to provide more information/details or explain better.

[BérangèreL]

Hi @ArtyCele and all my Best Wishes for 2024!!!

Great question, thanks for asking the Community about this!

I found similar threads that might help you:

- Here "Workflow - Create a New Deal and Tasks based on Close date of a Deal", @karstenkoehler suggests custom coded workflow action
- On this post "Workflow Triggered by Date that has Passed?", @MFrankJohnson gives some enrolment triggers, not sure if that would apply in your specific case but you might want to try?

For a workaround I was thinking that you could create a today's date property and then use the deal property trigger (as shown on the screenshot below). It's a bit complicated but it might help!

I also wanted to invite a couple of subject matter experts to this conversation: Hi @danmoyle, @FCorbaci and @KTownsend do you have suggestions to help @ArtyCele, please?

If anybody else has anything to add and/or share, please feel free to join in the conversation 🙂

Thanks a lot 🌟 and have a great day!

Best,
Bérangère

[FCorbaci]

@ArtyCele , Nothing comes to mind with built-in functionalities as of now to achieve "exactly" what you want. I understand by making a field mandatory you want to by-pass the need for control mechanisms (often even in that case you will need a mechanism since people can fill in that property with text such as "aaa" "postpone" etc) but you can achieve your result by adding a soft control mechanism. At least until there is a better solution for you. If you are open to different approaches I can eloborate what I have in mind. In any case, wishing you the best.

[ArtyCele]

@FCorbaci thank you for your contribution, that makes total sense!

The whole idea is that there would be in way, more accountability, as currently we get a slack message saying that the close date is changed, without any reasoning for the change.

More than open to any different approach you might have in mind! 

Best,

Arty

[FCorbaci · Accepted solution]

You should have filtering criteria to identify unexpected/ extraordinary close date changes. You need to define what they are. E.g. if a close date is 5 days away from now, you expect that deal to be won or lost in 5 days, if not and close date is changed, We need a reasoning. You can achieve this filtering by 

*Have a property that calculates the time between today's date and close date. 
*Optional:  A workflow that assigns a forecast category based on the time, e.g. if time between today and close date is 5 days, set forecast category "expected to close". You can  use this for the worklows I mention following or just use the time between as a trigger. Having category for those forecasts can help you communicate with your reps. Explaining "5 days until close date" is harder than saying if "your deal is in expected to close" category imo.
* A workflow that checks the deal stage after a delay (5 days in this case) for the current stage. (optionally also for close date if its updated)
* If its closed, no problem, if its not, create high high-priority task for the rep and email them to explain why its not closed yet.

From my experience, any process that has no exposure, and connection to personal goals is prone to be ignored. So you need to make sure those tasks' progresses are visible somehow.  e.g. A report in a dashboard that shows the push reason for those deals.

You were mentioning that you used a process involving today's date, not sure if what I wrote is any different.


Hope it helps

[FCorbaci]

Also, I humbly propose making sure that this is the "right" problem to focus on. Is your problem reps pushing the deal close date unexpectedly or is the problem they are not checking in time or do enough follow-ups until the close date. Maybe what you really need is a sales process improvement of reps until a deal's close date so they don't have to push a deal at last minute, because they will be constantly checking and be realistic about the close date.

Another thing I would ask is how those forecasts reflect on your reps. Is having a high forecasted amount of sales for certain periods an incentive for them, then its natural they will keep their close dates in those periods to make sure their forecasts show high numbers and push it later, because why not 😄

[ArtyCele]

Thanks for that @BérangèreL and Happy 2024 to you too ! Had a look at the those posts but it doesn't look like it is the solution we'd need, as we'd want the deal to stay the same one and apply a similar logic to the Sales stages, where if a field (close date) is modified to be in the future then you'd need a mandatory multi line field filled.

We tried your solution of having todays date but that wouldn't work well as sometimes they are a month out from closing and would still be modified. so we'd still want a reason for that case but unaware of how to implement that. 

Should I raise this as an idea in the community? to have conditional logic work on dates too?

Thanks for your help as always!

[BérangèreL]

Hi @ArtyCele and thank you! ❤️

If these workarounds unfortunately don't work, then the Ideas Forum is the way to go!

I’ve noticed a similar idea already present in our Ideas Forum: Create a rule/logic - date property related conditions.

To contribute, you can upvote the existing idea and share more details about your specific use case in the comments.

Thank you and have a lovely day!
My pleasure!

Best,
Bérangère

[ArtyCele]

@BérangèreL @karstenkoehler  any idea on a workaround or who has encountered this before?