Lifecycle & governance

IN THIS ARTICLE

Statuses

The deal header provides a snapshot of the current value and status, along with the primary action to progress to the next stage. Probability is the likelihood of closing the deal, which is used to weight forecasts and calculate expected value.

A deal is editable only while it's a draft. Once it's submitted for approval, approved or closed it becomes read-only. Redraft it back to draft to make further changes.

Some examples of deal statuses

A draft Deal

A deal pending approval

An approved Deal

A deal that closed with a win!

Actions

Each status has a primary action that moves the deal to the next stage

Requesting approval

When a deal is ready for review, submit it for approval. The deal moves to Pending approval and your approvers (managers and above) are notified by email. You can target a specific approver or notify all of them, and add an optional comment.

A pending deal is read-only. To make further changes, redraft it back to draft.

To request approval for several variants of an opportunity at once, choose Request approvals... from the menu on the opportunity's name on the pipeline, or drag the name to For approval. The dialog steps through each variant, and you can untick any you want to leave in draft. Approving several variants works the same way.

Requesting approval

Before you submit, read the Review panel on the deal overview. It raises the things your approver is most likely to ask about, while the deal is still editable.

Approving a deal

A manager or above can approve a pending deal, which moves it to Approved. Admins can also approve a draft directly, skipping the approval step. When a deal is approved, whoever requested it is notified by email.

Approving a deal

Redrafting a deal

Redrafting sends a deal back to Draft so it can be edited again. Redrafting a pending deal prompts you for a reason, which is recorded in the deal's activity and emailed to the person who requested approval. You can also redraft an approved, in play or closed deal to reopen it. Redrafting a variant never changes the other variants of its opportunity.

Closing a deal

When you close a deal, you will be prompted to select a result (won, lost or abandoned), a reason and a close date (defaults to current date). Once a deal is closed, it can no longer be edited

Closing a variant of an opportunity as won or lost closes the opportunity: its other open variants are abandoned, and the dialog lists them before you confirm. Abandoning a variant asks whether to abandon this variant only or every variant.

Closing a deal

Won / lost reasons

The reason dropdown is pre-populated with options based on the selected result type (won, lost, abandoned). If you don’t set a value, it will default to No reason

Won reasons

• Feature/Capability - key differentiator
• Price - best perceived value
• Timing - proposed timeline met customer expectation
• Outsold - superior sales execution
• Reputation - proven record or ability to deliver
• Non-competitive
• Other

Lost reasons

• Feature/Capability - did not meet a specific customer need/requirement
• Price - too expensive or poor perceived value
• Timing - proposed timeline did not align to customer expectation
• Outsold - poor sales execution
• Reputation - customer lacks confidence in ability to deliver
• Poor qualification - opportunity wasn't real/appropriate fit in the first place
• Unresponsive - customer has gone silent
• Timing/priority - customer changed internal priorities or timelines
• Do nothing - customer no longer proceeding with project
• No budget - customer no longer has budget for the project
• Other

Abandoned reasons

• Duplicate
• Superseded - replaced by a new variant of the deal
• Another variant won - another variant of the opportunity was won
• Opportunity lost - the opportunity was lost on another variant
• Placeholder - A temporary Deal that was created for training or testing purposes
• Product/Market Fit - deal has been disqualified due to lack of relevance
• Price Fit - deal has been disqualified due to price expectations
• Sales Bandwidth - lack of bandwidth to respond to opportunity
• Delivery Bandwidth - lack of capacity to deliver if won
• Other

Versions

A version is a read-only copy of the deal. Estii saves one automatically when a deal is redrafted or updated, and before a space update is applied, so you can look back at the deal as it stood at each step.

Updates

A deal keeps its own copy of the space's roles, resources and settings. When the space has changed, an update banner appears in the deal so you can choose how the changes are applied.