You will be able to spot the warning signs that a forecast deal will not close in the period.
Before you trust a forecast deal, look for three warning signs: a buyer who has gone quiet, a close date that has shifted more than once, and a missing decision maker or dated next step. Then ask the rep what would have to happen for the deal to close this period. That question gives you a more reliable answer than asking how confident the rep feels.
Consider a deal that sat in commit for six weeks and then, in the final week of the quarter, was pushed into the next one. The rep's explanation was that the buyer's CFO wanted another look. Looking back at the CRM, the close date had been changed twice already, and no one on the sales side had ever talked to the CFO. The signs had been on record for a month before the slip, and no one had checked for them. Most slipping deals give warnings like these well ahead of time.
Count it as a warning when the buyer has had no contact with you for two weeks or more. Contact here means an action from the buyer's side: a reply, a call they joined, a document they sent, or an introduction to a colleague. Emails from the rep that go unanswered are not contact.
Silence can sit behind a healthy-looking stage. The CRM might show "proposal seen" or "terms agreed" while the buyer stopped responding some time ago. The stage records what has already happened, while the silence shows you where the deal stands today. A buyer heading towards a decision tends to ask questions, request documents and raise start dates. When that activity stops, the buyer has often turned to another priority, picked another supplier, or decided to keep things as they are. Sales foundations, lesson 1.3, "Why no decision beats every competitor", covered how often that last outcome happens.
The two-week figure is a rule of thumb, suited to teams whose sales cycles run from a few weeks to a few months. Where cycles are much longer, a bigger gap can be normal, so agree a window for your team and use it on every deal. In the pipeline review from lesson 5.1, the question "What has the buyer done since last week?" brings out silence fast.
A close date that has changed more than once is the second sign. One change usually has an ordinary cause: the buyer's finance team takes longer than planned, a key person goes on leave, a board meeting gets rescheduled. After a second change, expect a third, because the cause behind the moves is still unresolved. If the date has gone from March to April to May (an invented example), the rep has not yet found out what the buyer's timeline hinges on.
Most CRMs keep a record of when each field changed. Open the close date history on every forecast deal and flag the ones moved more than once.
Wei Ming, a sales manager, does this on a Monday and finds that Daniel's S$16,000 deal has had its close date moved twice. Daniel, one of his reps, still feels confident. As they go through it together, it emerges that the buyer's operations director has twice asked for "a bit more time to check internally" without ever saying what was being checked. Wei Ming keeps the deal in the forecast but moves it to best case until Daniel learns what the check is.
The third sign is about how the deal is built. If no decision maker is named, or there is no agreed next step with a date attached, the deal does not belong in commit, whatever its stage and however sure the rep is. With no named decision maker, the rep cannot say who will approve the purchase, and so cannot say when or whether approval will come. With no agreed next step, nothing on the calendar moves the deal on, and progress waits for the buyer to act. Either gap limits the deal to best case at most.
These checks line up with the commit definition Wei Ming's team settled in lesson 5.2, "Three ways to forecast, and why to use more than one". There, a commit deal needs a named decision maker and an agreed next step with a date, plus the other criteria the team set. If your definition already demands these, the sign to watch for is a deal placed in commit without them.
Put this to the rep for each forecast deal: "What would have to happen for this to close this period?" Ask for every step in order, each with a date. A typical list might run from the buyer's legal review to sign-off by the finance director to the contract coming back signed. Then go through the list:
Did the rep confirm each step with the buyer, or is it a guess? At a realistic pace, does each step fit in the time left in the period? Who at the buyer owns each step, and has anyone talked to that person?
Deals that are slipping usually break down at one particular step. Often the rep knows the first two and has assumed everything after.
In the third week of the month, Wei Ming puts the question to Mei Ling, another rep, about her largest commit deal. She names four steps. The fourth is approval from the buyer's regional office in Kuala Lumpur, something she had heard mentioned but never checked. She makes a short call to her contact and learns the regional office meets monthly, with its next meeting falling after the period closes. The deal goes into next month's commit, and the forecast proves correct.
Asking the question says nothing about whether you trust the rep. A rep gains as much from it as the manager does, since a loose hope becomes a set of actions to work through.
When a forecast deal shows any of the signs, change its category in the review itself rather than handing it back to the rep to consider. A commit deal with two weeks of silence, a close date moved twice, or no decision maker goes down to best case until the problem is fixed. Record the reason in writing, so the rep can see exactly what would bring the deal back up.
The first time you do this it can feel harsh. It gives you a more accurate forecast and gives the rep a clear task. After a few months, reps tend to run the checks on their own deals before the meeting.
In the activity below you will review five forecast deals against these warning signs. For each one, write which signs it shows, if any, and what category it belongs in after the check.
Check five forecast deals against the warning signs and reclassify any that fail.
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