Sales leadership · 3 min read

Postponing Again

A pipeline of three good deals is not a pipeline. It is three dates that can move, and they usually do.

In 2024 DMA’s president sent me a report every morning. It listed what he had done the day before, and ended with the same block of numbers for each business: new leads, calls, scheduled calls, deals closed, revenue that day. Above that block was the part I read first: the strong leads, each with a monthly value and a confidence percentage.

On 8 May the block for DMA read: new leads 0, calls 14, scheduled calls 2, deals closed 0, revenue 0. The strong leads were one prospect at 4 to 10 thousand a month, 80% confidence; a franchise business’s paid search pilot, 90%; a school at 5 to 7 thousand a month, coming back on the radar for the end of the month; and a written proposal to the franchise business for content work at a flat 25 thousand.

My first reply that morning was about volume:

From what I am seeing ; deal flow is light; need to 3X at the minimum on DMA side.

Then I asked what one line in the report meant. The franchise business wanted to know what it would cost if we implemented the content ourselves, instead of the agency they already had. My contact there was in favour, but the decision was someone else’s. The report said we were “working the angle.” My answer:

what is the number we’re thinking about pushing and when will they be making this decision by? give me details don’t just leave it open ended please

Watching the date move

Over the next five weeks the reports tracked the franchise deal closely. By June the paid search pilot had grown into a proposal at $6,650 a month, at 85% confidence. Then, on 11 June, the prospect wrote that they had decided to stay with their existing agency through July “to give us a little more time for the transition.” The report moved the close to July and noted they were “still looking at other options,” though we were told we had the front run.

My reply was one line:

The pressure to produce 10k for the month just turned on with the one deal you had postponing again.

By late July, the report said the prospect was running a formal request for proposals, and the close had moved to mid-August.

None of this was anyone’s failure. Larger clients do evaluate, interview other agencies and move their dates. That is exactly the point. When a month’s target depends on one deal of a few thousand dollars a month, the target is in the client’s hands, not yours.

What I asked for, every time

My replies that spring kept asking for three things.

A number. Not a range, and not “additional cost factors.” The price we intend to put in front of them.

A date and a person. When the decision gets made, and by whom. If our contact is not the one deciding, that is the most important line in the report, not a detail.

More of them. A confidence percentage on a single deal is a forecast of one event. Three times the deal flow is what turns the forecast into a month you can plan.

The third one is the hardest, because it takes the most work and produces nothing visible on the day. The same daily block that showed the strong leads also showed new leads, and on most of the days quoted here that number was zero. That number is the one that decides whether a postponement is a bad week or a bad quarter.

A deal at 90% confidence is still a deal that has not signed.