Sooner or later you’re going to ask "Why are we losing Deals? What can we learn?"
It’s a great question. The problem is that, because data is only available about the past, you have to have already been capturing the data you need to answer they question and most franchises don’t haven’t started collecting the data until someone asks the question.
And AI isn’t (yet?) a magic wand that can retroactively solve this problem for you. It will give you an answer, even if there isn’t any data to base that answer on, so be careful. This is a case where you need to sculpt the data and tell AI what’s important to get good answers.
So here’s What Good Looks Like:
- When you look back at a date range, you can see at a high level the categorical reasons (good or bad) all the Deals were lost and those reasons are franchise specific.
- If you want to drill down on a specific Deal, there is some description that explains the categorical reason.
- You can slice the data by the Stage of your diligence process the Deal was lost from.
- You can slice the data by Rep.
- You can slice the data by SDR or Setter you can slice the data that way.
- This is a topic for a different article but you can slice this data by Lead Source and Vendor.
Here’s the structure I put in place so franchise development team can get real answers about lost Deals.
The Worst Solution I’ve Ever Seen
The worst version of this I’ve encountered was a sales pipeline where a past admin had tried to answer the question with Deal Stages alone. They’d built a separate Closed Lost stage for every active stage in the pipeline — "Closed Lost from Presentation Scheduled," "Closed Lost from Discovery," and so on down the line.
It seems like this answers the question. But in practice it creates a mess of the data and reporting and pipeline management got a lot more tedious for the Reps.
Get your data right: the reasons a Deal doesn’t close are facets of the Deal, not stages of the process.
What Good Looks Like
A well-built pipeline answers two questions on demand, each with its own Report.
The first: which stage are Deals dying from? Deals should die in greater numbers earlier in the funnel. That’s why we call it a funnel. Use this report to look for discontinuities.
The second: why are you losing them? A clean breakdown of normalized categories turns a vague worry into a ranked list you can act on.
Neither Report is exotic. They’re easily to build. You just need the data.
The additional data (Rep, SDR, description) are dimensions you drill down on to analyze and understand the data
The Closed Lost Suite, Field by Field
Five fields give you everything the Reports above need. A couple you already have. The rest you’ll create. Here’s each one, what it does, and whether it needs building.
Closed Lost Category
A dropdown of normalized loss reasons specific to your business: "Chose Competitor," "No Funding," "Bad Territory Fit," etc. This field powers the pie chart. Free-typed reasons can’t be rolled up, so a controlled set of options is what makes the data reportable. Its a custom dropdown property you’ll need to create and populate with relevant values.
Closed Lost Description
A text field for the short story behind the loss. This is a built in single line text property. A once sentence elaboration on the Category is what reps (or AI) will fill in here when a deal is lost. A little coaching will be required because “No territory” is not a helpful description but “Only interested in east side of Dallas, all territories there are sold.” is a very helpful description.
Previous Deal Stage
The stage a Deal reached before it was lost. Record it on the Deal so your pipeline stays clean while the Stage Closed Lost From Report still works. This is a custom property you’ll need create and populate with an automation. Or, of course, FranDev Lab can do this for you.
Deal Owner
The rep who owned the Deal. You already have this it’s the standard Deal Owner property you’re setting on every HubSpot Deal. Its especially useful for reporting and coaching when you find a Rep losing Deals for categories that are mismatches for the Pipeline Stage. You shouldn’t be losing Deals late the pipeline or for Net Worth mismatches for example.
Qualifying Rep
If your sales motion has an SDR or BDR handing Deals to a closer, capture who qualified each one. This is a custom Owner property (not the main one). It gives you visibility into effective qualification by the Qualifying Rep. If one Setter has a high percentage of Deals lost for “Investment Level Too High” later in the pipeline, they need coaching on their qualification calls.
Where to Start
None of this is heavy lifting. It’s a handful of properties, a clean pie chart, and requiring Category and Description when a Deal is Closed Lost.
You’ll need to create 2 properties: The Closed Lost Category and Qualifying Rep if your process uses one.
Add Closed Lost Category and Closed Lost Description
Then create the 2 reports and watch the data roll in.
If you’d rather not architect it yourself, that’s exactly the kind of problem I solve. Bring it to me and we’ll solve it fast.