Deal & pipeline intelligence

Deal and pipeline intelligence reads the activity around each opportunity, such as emails, meetings, contacts involved and how long a deal has sat in one stage. From that it flags deals that look healthy and deals that look stuck. A deal marked as 'proposal sent' may be flagged because nobody has replied for three weeks, or because the decision maker has never joined a call. Tools such as Clari, Gong and Salesloft include this.

Reps are often optimistic, and stage names alone say little about real progress. Leaders need an early warning before a quarter slips away. This feature helps managers spend their time on the deals that need help instead of reviewing the whole list. It is most useful with a team, a longer sales cycle and a large number of open deals. For a solo seller with a few deals, personal judgement is usually enough.

• Which signals does it use, and can you see why a deal is flagged?
• How much data does it need before the flags become reliable?
• Can managers filter and review risky deals in one view?
• Does it need extra connections, such as email and calendar access, to work properly?