Touches are not progress

Say a Rep logs ten calls and emails on one deal in two weeks. The activity report looks great. The deal is exactly where it was.

Plenty of tools count that as a good week, because they count activity. Activity is easy to count. Advancement is the part that matters, and it is the part most teams never measured.

Keep the two apart

In PontemVelo a Rep logs a touch (a call, an email, a meeting, a note) against the step it belongs to, and it shows right under that step. It does not complete the step. A step is done when something actually happened: the questionnaire came back, the meeting was booked, the redlines were agreed.

That small split makes two things visible that were blurred together before. How much effort went into a deal, and how far the deal moved.

What to do when they come apart

• Lots of touches, nothing moving. Something is blocking the deal and effort is not fixing it. Change the approach, or find a different person to talk to.
• Quiet for weeks. Is it still alive? Ask the buyer for a real next step or move it out of the pipeline.
• Steps moving with few touches. Good. Leave it alone.

The Rep’s weekly plan flags the first two and suggests what to do about each one, in order of how much it matters. The same flag shows up for the Manager and in the 1 on 1 prep, so the conversation starts at the deal and not at the activity count.

You can’t control the outcome

A deal can still go either way. What you can control is whether it is being advanced. Count that.