You will be able to identify warning signs that a forecast deal will not close in the period.
It is the last week of the quarter. A deal that has been in commit for six weeks suddenly moves to next quarter. The rep says the buyer's CFO wants another look. You check the CRM and see the close date has moved twice before. Nobody had spoken to the CFO at any point. Looking back, the signs were there for a month. Nobody was looking for them.
Most deals that slip give warnings well before they slip. This lesson covers the common ones and a question that tests a forecast deal more reliably than asking the rep how confident they are.
The first warning sign is no contact with the buyer for two weeks or more. Contact here means the buyer did something: replied, joined a call, sent a document, introduced someone. The rep sending emails into silence does not count.
A deal can sit at proposal seen or even terms agreed in the CRM while the buyer has gone quiet. The stage reflects what happened in the past. Silence tells you about now. Buyers who are moving towards a decision usually have questions, need documents, want to talk about start dates. A buyer who has stopped engaging has often moved on to another priority, another supplier, or a decision not to change anything, which Sales foundations, lesson 1.3, Why no decision beats every competitor, explained is a common outcome.
Two weeks is a rule of thumb for teams with sales cycles of a few weeks to a few months. If your cycle is much longer, a longer gap may be normal. Set the window for your team and use it consistently. In the pipeline review from lesson 5.1, the question "What has the buyer done since last week?" will surface silence quickly.
The second warning sign is a close date that has moved more than once. The first move is often reasonable. The buyer's finance team is slower than expected, someone is on leave, the board meeting was rescheduled. But a date that has moved twice usually moves again, because the reason it moved has not been dealt with.
Most CRMs record when a field was changed. Look at the history of the close date for each forecast deal. A deal whose date has moved from March to April to May is telling you that the rep does not yet know what the buyer's timeline depends on.
When Wei Ming checked his commit list one Monday, he found that a S$16,000 deal of Daniel's had moved its close date twice, though Daniel was still confident about it. When they talked it through, the buyer's operations director had asked twice for "a bit more time to check internally" and had never said what needed checking. The deal stayed in the forecast, but as best case, until Daniel found out.
The third sign is structural. A deal without a named decision maker, or without an agreed next step with a date, is not a commit, whatever stage it sits in and however the rep feels about it.
Without a decision maker, the rep does not know who will say yes, so they cannot know when or whether that person will. Without an agreed next step, there is nothing scheduled that would move the deal, so it relies on the buyer taking the initiative. Both are reasons to keep a deal in best case at most.
These tests match the commit definition Wei Ming's team agreed in lesson 5.2, Three ways to forecast, and why to use more than one. If your commit definition already requires them, the warning sign is a deal that someone has put in commit without them.
The most useful single question for a forecast deal is "What would have to happen for this to close this period?" Ask the rep to list each step, in order, with a date: the buyer's legal review, the finance director's sign-off, the contract signed and returned, and so on.
Then check each item. Has the rep confirmed with the buyer that these are the steps, or is the rep guessing? Is there enough time left in the period for each step at a realistic pace? Who on the buyer's side is responsible for each one, and has anyone spoken to them?
Most slipping deals fail this test in a specific place. Typically the rep knows the first two steps and has assumed the rest. Wei Ming asked Mei Ling this about her largest commit deal in the third week of the month. She listed four steps. The last was a sign-off by the buyer's regional office in Kuala Lumpur, which she had heard about but never confirmed. A short call with her contact revealed the regional office met monthly, and the next meeting was after the period ended. The deal moved to the next month's commit, and the forecast was right.
None of this is about distrusting reps. The question is useful for the rep as much as for you, because it turns a vague hope into a list of actions they can work through.
When a forecast deal shows one of these signs, change its category in the review rather than leaving it for the rep to think about. A commit deal with two weeks of silence, a twice-moved date or no decision maker drops to best case until the problem is fixed. Write down the reason so the rep knows exactly what would move it back.
This feels harsh the first time, but it makes your forecast more accurate, and it gives the rep a specific job. Over a few months, reps start checking for the warning signs themselves 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.
Review five forecast deals against the warning signs and reclassify any that fail.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).