Slippage Pattern Agent

The agent runs whenever an opportunity’s close date is pushed. Each push recalculates the pattern, so sales leadership sees changes as they happen rather than waiting for a quarterly review.

• Trigger: An opportunity’s close date is pushed
• Recalculate: After every push

Next, the agent pulls every close date push from this quarter and last quarter. Using both quarters gives it enough history to find repeated groupings and lets the trend report compare the current picture with the previous quarter.

• Include: Every close date push from this quarter
• Include: Every close date push from last quarter

The agent groups the close date pushes by rep, stage, and deal size, then identifies any grouping that sits well above the others. This shows whether pushes are concentrated around particular reps, stages, or sizes of deal.

Using the repeated groupings, the agent writes what the patterns mean and compares this quarter with last quarter. If nothing repeats, it says so instead of forcing a trend that is not there.

Next, the agent creates a new slippage report for the current run. Keeping one report per run leaves a history of when a pattern appeared, changed, or disappeared.

• Create: One slippage report per run
• Keep: Reports from earlier runs

Finally, the agent emails the slippage report to sales leadership. It puts the pattern in front of the people who can change a stage definition when that is what keeps causing close dates to move.

• Recipients: Sales leadership
• Send: The slippage report from the current run