Deal triage: more than forecasting

When you see the triage in ctrl.io in action for the first time, it’s easy to focus on how it can help you with your forecast, as a manager.

But what you get when you start using it is so much more than that:

Focus and prioritisation

Triage as a concept is all about figuring out what’s most important to pay attention to first.

AE’s can get lost in the weeds when they bounce around their pipeline from deal to deal. The simple process of noting your best opportunities means it’s easier to make sure those are taken care of first, so a “likely” deal doesn’t slip through the cracks.

Plus, it’s much easier to have a shortlist to focus on when you check in to see if they need your help – nobody wants a pipeline review where you try to deep dive on every single opportunity…

Spot a mismatch

Asking someone how confident they are about a deal doesn’t mean just taking their opinion as a prediction for your forecast, it gives you the perfect checkpoint to see if you’re on the same page.

If a seller says this deal is “likely” but you can’t see any evidence that they have clarity on what it takes to close it, or they don’t have a plan for how to handle the next step, you have an opportunity to coach them proactively. If you spot an opportunity that seems like an easy win but they haven’t flagged it as green, you can suggest they bring attention to it.

Manage to goals

The most successful AEs see their pipeline as more than just a collection of opportunities. They strategically manage it as their “book of business” and figure out how to map what’s in the CRM to their quota.

By using triage, you don’t need to wait for deals to reach the “commit” stage in your pipeline or add totals in your head to get a quick idea of how things add up compared to their goal, so it’s much easier to spot a gap earlier and find a way to fill it while you still have time in the quarter.

Triage with minimum effort

You can use our template to try a manual triage and get those benefits with your team.

But using ctrl.io means you can get your team to triage their deals synced straight from HubSpot so there’s no copying and pasting, no stale exports, and no spreadsheet to dig out when you want to review the pipeline.