Same Old Song and Dance

For early stage B2B revenue leaders, one of the hardest things to determine consistently is which deals are real and which aren’t.  Whether leaders are following 20 deals or 220, their situation is the same: they’re trying to match reality versus what their reps are telling them across a variety of deal stages, values, close dates, and products, all within a complex selling environment.  That’s enough to make anyone question if their deals have ever been good enough. 

Add to that the common practice of pushes, and any revenue leader is bound to get a little bit angry.  Pushes are when reps move the close date of a deal anywhere from one to several months into the future, typically right before the end of a reporting period (like a month or quarter).  When this happens, the pipeline and forecast can kinda fall apart and things get so crazy: leaders demand deal reviews, RevOps and FP&A scramble to redo forecasts and reports, and marketing gets called in to generate more demand to fix the lower year-to-go coverage.  Everyone feels like they’ve been taken for granted by the sales reps.

As much of a pain as this is, the truth is that pushes happen.  They’re not a red flag by themselves, but they could be a yellow one.  Too many pushes typically signal that the deal is in danger of not closing.  Combined with the deal stage (especially early stages) and age (older is worse), multiple pushes almost always mean no deal.

A Change Would Do You Good

Tired of feeling cheated and wronged with deals?  Here’s how to avoid pushes:

• Normalize: Deals push. It’s normal, especially in a complex B2B deal cycle. Have your RevOps team or an analyst figure out the average number of pushes per deal. Tip: Break down by product or other meaningful segment if needed, but be careful to have a viable sample size so you’re not drawing the wrong conclusions from a small number of deals.
• Monitor: Set up a report to track the total number of pushes. You’ll likely need to do this manually unless you upgrade your CRM or buy a pipeline analytics tool. Most CRMs don’t have this as part of their basic out-of-the-box functionality.
• Redefine: Consider reviewing your deal stage definitions and verifiable outcomes.  Too many pushes might be a sign that deals are being added to the pipeline and advanced prematurely.