When to create deal?

[keshukeshvala]

Hi, We are a custom software consulting/development company. 

This question will help to many service/consulting companies who offer services. 

I am looking to get best practices that when should we create deals? What is ideal Point/time to create deal? 

1. In our case we receive many inquiries from prospects/leads who are looking for services we offer.

We create deals when we receive such inquiries. 

2. Then our next stage is Check budget and possibilities of technical needs. 

But many times either they dont qualify or do not move forward in our deal pipeline because they dont have budget or what they are looking for is not feasible due to technical restrictions or limitations. 

our second deal stage is : Qualified to move forward

deal stage 3. Proposal

4. Negotiations

5. Closed won. /closed lost

Question 1: 

My Question is shall we only create deals after propsect is qualified based on budget/feasibility --- as of now stage 2 for us? 

Or our current process is good?

Question 2: 

If we create deals or start creating deals from step 2 currently (making it step 1) --- then where should we handle prospecting parts effectively? 

Question 3: 

In current process/stages we see too many deals and some time too many forecasting values. But many times we loose most of them...  

Or please share pros and cons of both way...

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @keshukeshvala,

The fact that you're losing many deals for certain reasons doesn't necessarily mean that deals shouldn't exist for those scenarios. Your ability to measure how many deals exactly get lost, for what reason, and when, is very valuable. As long as you're asking, upon marking a deal closed lost, why it is closed lost, I would rather want to see that information than not have a deal at all.

That being said, some companies wait with the deal creation until after having made some baseline checks with a prospect. A simple model to do so could be BANT: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/bant

Only after such a check would a deal be created. Before that, one could either work with contacts or the leads object: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/use-the-prospecting-workspace

The part about forecasting could by the way be solved by specifying low closing probabilities in the deal pipeline settings: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/set-up-and-customize-your-deal-pipelines-and-deal-stag...

Best regards!

[keshukeshvala]

Thank you

[XenderApk]

Create a deal when you want to offer special promotions, clear inventory, attract customers, or boost sales during strategic periods like holidays or product launches.