Active deal

An active deal is a deal where the customer has recently confirmed interest and a next step with a due date is recorded. You need both. A planned call with a silent customer does not make a deal active. Neither does a keen customer with no step in the CRM.

Your CRM lists open deals. It does not tell you which of them are active. For that you check two things on the deal card: the date of the customer's last reply and the due date of the next task. Example (invented numbers): the customer replied last week and the step is set for Friday.

For example, the customer replied last week and the step is set for Friday.

When you look at the pipeline, count active deals. Open ones overstate it. In a team of two to ten sellers, the head of sales pulls the list once a week before the meeting. The gap between open and active is the part of the pipeline that exists only on paper.

This count shapes decisions about workload. A seller with many open deals and few active ones should revive or close what they have before you give them more inquiries. New inquiries would only bury the deals that are still alive. The owner looks at the active count to judge whether the plan is within reach.

The next step is one half of the definition. Pipeline coverage gets more honest when you count only active deals. And deals that drop off the active list point you toward the leak: note the stage where each one stopped.

• Counting every open deal as active. The pipeline looks full and the forecast comes out too high. Check both conditions: a recent reply from the customer and a dated next step.
• No agreed window for "recent". One seller counts a reply from last week, another one from last quarter. Start with two weeks, test it against your sales cycle and write the rule down.
• Taking the seller's messages for interest. Unanswered emails mean the seller is active, not the customer. Look at the date of the customer's last reply.
• Keeping inactive deals open out of hope. Close them as lost with a reason. If the customer comes back, you can reopen the deal.

By Friday, the head of sales builds one list from the CRM: all open deals, the date of the customer's last reply and the due date of the next task. Mark each deal active or not, starting with a two-week window. Bring both counts, open and active, to the weekly meeting. There each seller goes through their inactive deals one by one: a new step with a date, or closed as lost with a reason.

CRM rules the team follows and a forecast review you can run every week.