Pipeline

Open deals and All deals

The Pipeline area takes over once a lead has turned into business. It has two views; you switch via the heading at the top left. Contents - Open deals - All deals - Kanban or list - Searching, filtering, sorting - Why a deal is missing - Next Open deals Shows the deals still being worked: Send offer and Closing. Closed deals are deliberately absent. Above the list sits the forecast bar with the Open volume and two monthly buckets. More on that under Forecast, confidence and weighted value. This is the view for daily work. All deals Additionally shows Won and Lost. The forecast bar is gone, because closed deals predict nothing. This is the view for looking back and searching. Kanban or list At the top right you switch between Kanban and List. Kanban shows one column per stage. Above each column sits the sum, for open stages also the average probability as Ø {value}% confidence, and for Won the note Realized {value}. Above the Lost column it reads last 30 days - only recently lost deals appear there, so the column does not grow over months. On the cards, next to the name and company, sits the expected closing month as Exp. {month}. The pipeline in the Kanban view You can drag cards into another column with the mouse. If the target stage needs details, a small window opens. List shows one row per deal, grouped into Overdue, Due today and Later, with the columns Deal, Stage, Follow-up, Probability, Value and Action. Searching, filtering, sorting Above the list you find: - The search field Name or company …. - Filter with Stage, Follow-up date (Any, Overdue, Due today, Upcoming, No date), Touchpoints and Value. - Sorted by with Urgency, Touchpoints, Probability and Value. The number of results sits on the right. Reset discards the filters. Why a deal is missing 1. You are in Open deals. Won and lost deals live under All deals ↗ only. 2. A filter is active. Check the filter bar. 3. You have the Sales role. Then you only see deals assigned to you. 4. The deal was never created. A lead does not become a deal on its own - that happens via Create offer, see From lead to deal and back. Next - Deal stages from offer to close - Editing a deal

Deal stages from offer to close

A deal runs through four stages. Whichever one applies helps decide what shows up in the forecast and what counts as a result on Home ↗. Contents - The four stages - Changing the stage - What you are asked for when switching - What happens at the close - Offer sent is a date of its own - Taking a stage back - Next The four stages | Stage | Meaning | |---|---| | Send offer | The deal exists, the offer is being prepared or is out. | | Closing | The commitment is there, the close is not yet formally done. | | Won | The business is done. | | Lost | Nothing will come of it. | Send offer and Closing count as open. Only those two appear in Open deals ↗ and feed the Open volume and the forecast. Changing the stage Two ways, same result: 1. On the detail page: click the stage you want in the bar inside the Pipeline & status block. 2. In Kanban: drag the card into the target column. What you are asked for when switching Depending on the target stage, a window opens with the matching fields. Everything is optional - the window says All fields optional. - To Closing: Follow-up date, Confidence, Next step, Deal value and Offer sent. This is the point where the numbers should become reliable, which is why inDeal asks here. - To Lost: Select reason. - To Send offer and to Won: no extra fields. The stage switches immediately. Always fill in the Lost reason. It is the only place that later shows why a deal fell through. What happens at the close Once a deal sits on Won: - It leaves Open deals and the forecast. - Its value counts on Home under Closed won for the current month. - It counts towards New customers and Total customers. - The time from creating the lead to this point feeds the Sales cycle. With Lost it also leaves the forecast, but appears under All deals ↗ and in the Kanban column Lost - limited there to the last 30 days. Offer sent is a date of its own The Offer sent field is not set automatically when you change the stage. Fill it in as soon as the offer is actually out. It is the basis of the Deal conversion analysis on Home, which measures Offer → closed won. Taking a stage back You can change any stage again at any time, including back from Won or Lost. The deal then reappears in Open deals and the monthly figures on Home change accordingly. That is the right way to correct a mistaken classification. Next - Forecast, confidence and weighted value - Editing a deal

Editing a deal

A click on a deal opens its detail page. The layout is the same as on a lead, the fields are different. Contents - The header - Pipeline & status - The other blocks - Changing fields - Note, logging and history - The three fields worth maintaining - Deleting a deal - Next The header Name, job title and company of the contact, with these to their right: - Call dials the stored number. - LinkedIn opens the contact's profile, if a profile address is stored. - Email opens a new mail window, if an address is stored. - The menu with the remaining actions. The arrows page through the list you came from; next to them it reads Deal {n} of {total}. Pipeline & status The most important block. The stage bar at the top, next to it the way back via From lead phase. Below: | Field | Meaning | |---|---| | Follow-up date | when you get back to it | | Next step | what needs doing | | Deal value | the size of the business | | Confidence | how likely the close is, in percent | | Expected close | when you expect to close | | Weighted value | value times confidence, not editable | | Offer sent | when the offer went out | | Sales cycle | how many days the deal has been running, against the stored benchmark | | Touchpoints | number of contact points | The header of a deal with the Pipeline & status block The other blocks Contact - Phone, Mobile, Email and LinkedIn. Company - Company, Employees, Industry, Website and Company LinkedIn. Details - Campaign, Channel, Lead source and Last reply. If the deal sits on Lost, Lost reason joins them. System - Last activity, Days in deal, Created and Assigned to. The fields in Contact and Details belong to the contact person. Change something there and it changes on the matching lead too - it is the same record. The fields under Company belong to the deal's company and apply to all its contacts, see Companies (Accounts). Changing fields Click a value. Almost every field is editable in place; hovering shows Click to edit. Changes save immediately and Saved appears briefly. Note, logging and history The same tools sit on the left as on a lead: the Note field with Pin, below it the logging area with the tabs Call, LinkedIn, Email and Meeting, and the activity list. The entries Offer sent, Won and Lost appear there too. View history in the Pipeline & status block shows which fields were changed when. The three fields worth maintaining 1. Follow-up date - without a date the deal appears in no work list. How to set it with the calendar and get an email reminder: Set a follow-up with a reminder. 2. Confidence - it determines the Weighted value and therefore the whole forecast. 3. Expected close - it decides which monthly bucket the deal lands in. All three are estimates. An honest estimate beats an empty field. Deleting a deal Through the actions menu in the header. The deal lands in the trash and is purged after 30 days; until then it can be restored. With the Sales role you do not see the menu. Next - Set a follow-up with a reminder - Forecast, confidence and weighted value - From lead to deal and back

Forecast, confidence and weighted value

The forecast bar sits above Open deals ↗. The question behind it is simple: what can you count on this month and next? Contents - What the bar shows - The three quantities - How the forecast stays usable - The stored benchmarks - Forecast and Home are not the same thing - Next What the bar shows On the left the Open volume - the sum of all open deals, unweighted, plus the count. On the right two buckets, one for this month and one for the next, each with Exp. {month}, the number of deals and the note weighted. The forecast bar above the open deals Below it sits a footnote with the assumed durations for Send offer and Closing and a note that weighting is by Confidence. The link next to it is called Open performance settings and takes you straight to where those values can be changed. The three quantities Confidence Your estimate in percent of how likely this deal is to happen. The value sits in the Pipeline & status block and can be changed at any time. A new deal starts with a default; change it as soon as you know better. Weighted value Deal value times Confidence, divided by 100. Business worth 50,000 euros at 40 percent probability gives a weighted value of 20,000 euros. The field is not editable - it always follows the other two. The forecast works with this weighted sum, not with the full value. That is why the monthly bucket is always smaller than the Open volume. Expected close Decides which monthly bucket a deal falls into. inDeal goes about it like this: 1. If the Expected close field is filled, that date applies. 2. If it is empty, inDeal takes the moment the deal entered its current stage and adds the Sales cycle benchmark from the settings. On the card in Kanban, the resulting month appears as Exp. {month}. How the forecast stays usable 1. Fill in Expected close. Without that date inDeal works with a benchmark that may be too short or too long for your business. 2. Keep Confidence current. A deal at 80 percent that has been sitting for three months distorts the whole number. 3. Close what is closed. As long as a deal sits on Send offer although it was lost long ago, it inflates the forecast for no reason. The stored benchmarks The Sales cycle benchmark and the rates sit in Setup under Performance & conversion ↗. You find there: - Lead → meeting booked - Show rate - share of booked meetings that actually happen. - Pipeline conversion - from completed discovery to sent offer. - Deal conversion - from sent offer to won deal. - Sales cycle - average time from offer to close. - Customer lifetime value - average value of a won customer. Below the fields, inDeal works an example through 100 leads so you can see what your values mean. These settings require permissions - with the Sales role the area is not visible. Forecast and Home are not the same thing The forecast bar looks forward: what is likely to come. The Business outcome section on Home ↗ looks back: what was actually won. The two numbers have to differ, and neither is wrong for it. Next - Deal stages from offer to close - Conversion funnel and business outcome

From lead to deal and back

A deal does not appear on its own. It is created out of a lead, once the conversation has taken place. Contents - Creating a deal - What happens to the lead - Back to the lead - What this separation means for your numbers - A deal without a lead - The most common pitfalls - Next Creating a deal 1. Open the lead. 2. Set it to Discovery done. 3. The Deal phase section with the button Create offer appears in the Pipeline & status block. 4. Click it. In the Assign company dialog, confirm the matching company or create a new one, then Create deal. The deal is created and opened immediately. More in Companies (Accounts). The Deal phase section with the Create offer button The deal starts on Send offer. As its Deal value it takes the lead's Estimated value; if nothing was stored there, it starts at zero. Confidence starts at a default, Expected close is empty at first. Fill in those three right away. Without them the forecast works with defaults that may be too high or too low for your business. You are protected against duplicates: if a deal already exists for this lead, inDeal opens the existing one instead of creating a second. The button only appears at Discovery done. If the lead sits on an earlier stage, it is not there. That is deliberate: a deal without a conversation that took place has no reliable basis. Once the deal exists, Open deal sits in the same place. What happens to the lead The lead stays intact. It merely leaves Open leads ↗, because the work there is finished, and remains findable under All leads ↗. Contact details and campaign stay the same record. What you change on the deal under Contact changes on the lead too - and the other way round. The fields under Company belong to the deal's company and apply to all its contacts. Activities and notes are separate: what you logged on the lead stays on the lead; what you log on the deal belongs to the deal. Back to the lead In the deal's Pipeline & status block, From lead phase sits on the right with the original stage and the handover date. A click opens the lead. Use it when you want to see what was discussed before the meeting. What this separation means for your numbers On Home ↗ the separation matches the two overviews exactly: - Discovery pipeline counts the leads up to the meeting. - Deal pipeline counts the deals from the offer onwards. The Pipeline conversion analysis measures the transition between them, so Discovery → offer. If that value is low, conversations are happening without an offer following - or simply without a deal being created. A deal without a lead A deal can exist without a matching lead, for example when the lead was deleted afterwards. Then From lead phase is missing and the fields under Contact stay empty. Under Company you still see the deal's company. The deal itself keeps working. The most common pitfalls - No deal created. The lead sits on Discovery done, but nobody clicked Create offer. The revenue appears in no forecast. - Maintained twice. Contact details get changed on the lead and again on the deal. That is unnecessary, it is the same record. - Looking in the wrong place. After the handover the contact lives under Pipeline, no longer in Open leads. Next - Setting stages correctly - Open deals and All deals

Companies (Accounts)

Every deal belongs to a company. Under Accounts ↗ you see all companies you have deals with, and whether they are currently a customer. Contents - How a company is created - The four types - The four views - The company page - Maintaining company data - Merging - Collaboration ended - Contract dates - New customers and existing business - Common pitfalls - Next How a company is created You do not create a company by hand. It is created when you create a deal. 1. On the lead, click Create offer. 2. Assign company opens. inDeal looks for matching companies that already exist in your workspace: - first by the domain of the lead's email address, - then by the domain of their website, - finally by a similar name. 3. Confirm the match or choose New company and enter the name. 4. Click Create deal. The domain is simplified: sales.example.com and example.com count as the same company. Addresses from free email providers like Gmail, GMX or Web.de are never used for matching, because there is no company behind them. A match by name is only a suggestion. inDeal never picks it on its own, because different companies can have similar names. If you create a deal via the API or an AI assistant, inDeal decides by itself: if the lead already belongs to a company, it stays with it. Otherwise a company with the same domain is used, and if there is none, a new one is created. The four types inDeal calculates the type from the company's deals. You do not set it yourself. | Type | Meaning | |---|---| | Customer | At least one deal is Won, and the contract is still running (no Contract end in the past). | | Prospect | Never won, but at least one open deal (Send offer or Closing). | | Lost customer | There was a won deal, but the contract ran out or the collaboration was ended. | | Lost prospect | Never won and no open deal left. | If you win a new deal with a lost customer, the company becomes a Customer again. The four views The list has four fixed views, one per type: Customers, Prospects, Lost customers and Lost prospects. When you open it, you see Customers. For each company the list shows name, domain, type, number of contacts, open deals, won value, next contract end and last activity. Use the search field to find a company by name or domain. The company page Clicking a company opens its page: - Company data: name, website, industry, number of employees, company phone and address. - Contacts: all leads that belong to this company. - Deals: all deals of the company, each marked New business or Existing business. At the top you find the actions New deal, Collaboration ended and Merge with …. With New deal you create another deal for one of the contacts, for example a renewal or an add-on project. inDeal recognises by itself whether the deal counts as existing business. From the lead and the deal you get to this page via Open company in the Company block. Maintaining company data The company is the shared source for the company data of all its contacts. If you change the name, the website or the address, inDeal applies it to all contacts of the company. That holds wherever you change it: on the company page, in the Company block of the lead or of the deal. If an enrichment adds company data, it lands on the company as well, but only in fields that are still empty there. Merging Sometimes the same company exists twice, for example because a contact uses a different email domain. 1. Open the company that should stay. 2. Click Merge with …. 3. Choose the duplicate company and confirm with Merge. Contacts and deals of the duplicate move to the company that stays. Empty fields are filled from the duplicate. Afterwards the duplicate disappears from the list. Collaboration ended If a customer stops without a contract end being recorded, click Collaboration ended and confirm. The company then counts as a Lost customer. You can take this back with Undo. If you later win a new deal, the company becomes a Customer again, even without undoing anything. Contract dates When you set a deal to Won, inDeal asks for Contract start and Contract end. Both are optional. You can change them later on the deal in the Pipeline & status block. If the Contract end is in the past and there is no other running contract, the company becomes a Lost customer. Without a contract end the contract counts as running. New customers and existing business On Home ↗ inDeal distinguishes two kinds of won deals: - New customers counts companies whose first won deal falls into the period. Two deals with the same company are one new customer, not two. - Existing business shows won deals with companies that are or once were a customer, with count and value. inDeal decides whether a deal is existing business when it is created: if the company was a Customer or Lost customer at that moment, the deal counts as existing business. Total customers counts all companies with at least one won deal. Common pitfalls - Wrong company confirmed. Check the domain under the name in the dialog. If it happens anyway, merge the two companies. - Free email contact ends up in a new company. With a Gmail or GMX address there is no domain match. Pick the right company in the dialog yourself if it already exists. - A customer still counts as customer after cancelling. Enter the Contract end on the won deal or click Collaboration ended. Next - From lead to deal and back - Deal stages from offer to close