If you’re in sales, ops, or just trying to wrangle a pipeline that actually makes sense, you know tracking deals isn’t as easy as the demo promised. CRMs are full of bells, whistles, and questionable “AI” buttons—but what actually helps you move deals forward? This guide is for anyone who wants to use Convrt to get a clear, honest picture of what’s happening in their pipeline, without getting lost in dashboards or sales jargon.
Below, I’ll walk you through real ways to track and analyze deal progress using Convrt’s pipeline features. You’ll get the good, the bad, and what’s mostly a distraction.
1. Set Up Your Pipeline for Reality, Not Fantasy
Don’t just accept the default stages. The first thing most people get wrong: they leave the pipeline stages as whatever the CRM shipped with. This is how you end up with “Qualified to Buy” and “Decision Maker Identified” stages that don’t mean anything in your actual process.
What to do: - Map out your real sales steps on a whiteboard or notepad first. - Trim stages to the minimum set you actually use (often 5–7 is plenty). - In Convrt, customize your pipeline stages to match how your deals actually flow. Rename or remove what you don’t use. - Add clear criteria for each stage, so everyone knows what “Qualified” or “Proposal Sent” actually means.
Pro tip: If you need a stage name longer than a tweet, it’s probably too complicated.
2. Get Serious About Deal Data (But Don’t Overdo It)
You can’t analyze what you don’t track—but you can definitely drown in busywork if you try to collect everything.
What to track (and what not to): - Must-haves: Deal owner, deal amount, close date, current stage, account/contact info, and key notes. - Nice-to-haves: Source, competitors, key blockers, last activity date. - Ignore: Every custom field you think you might need “someday.” If you’re not using it in reviews, drop it.
How Convrt helps: - Custom fields in Convrt let you track what matters, but only add what you’ll actually use. - Use required fields for the basics—don’t make notes or descriptions mandatory unless people actually fill them out. - Bulk edit is your friend. Use it to clean up sloppy or missing data every couple of weeks, instead of letting the pipeline rot.
3. Move Deals (Don’t Let Them Stagnate)
A pipeline where nothing moves is a pipeline where nothing closes. Convrt makes it easy to drag and drop deals between stages, but it’s on you (and your team) to actually keep things up to date.
How to keep deals moving: - Set up reminders or alerts in Convrt for deals stuck in a stage too long. - Use “Last Activity Date” as a filter or sort to spot neglected deals. - Run a weekly pipeline review—no excuses, no exceptions. If a deal hasn’t moved in two weeks, ask why.
What doesn’t work: Automated “nudge” emails to reps who ignore the CRM. If people aren’t using it, talk to them.
Pro tip: Don’t obsess over moving every deal forward. Sometimes a deal is dead—mark it lost and move on.
4. Slice and Dice With Filters and Views
You don’t need a “360-degree AI-powered dashboard.” You need to see what matters, fast. Convrt lets you filter and save views based on any field, so you can focus on what’s actually important.
How to use filters and views: - Save common filters: “Deals closing this month,” “Deals over $50k,” “Stuck in Proposal stage.” - Create personal views for yourself (or for each rep). Everyone sees what matters to them. - Use color-coding or tags for high-priority or at-risk deals. - Export filtered lists if you want to slice the data further in Excel or Google Sheets. Sometimes old-school is best.
What to ignore: Overly complicated tagging systems or color codes. If it takes more than two clicks to see what you want, simplify.
5. Analyze What Actually Matters
There’s no shortage of dashboards in Convrt. The trick is knowing which metrics are actually useful—and which just look good in a screenshot.
Metrics worth tracking: - Stage-to-stage conversion: Where do deals get stuck or die? That’s your bottleneck. - Time in stage: How long, on average, do deals sit in each stage? Outliers often need attention. - Win rate: Not just overall, but by source, rep, or deal type. - Pipeline coverage: Do you have enough in each stage to hit your targets? Don’t just look at “total pipeline”—look at what’s actually likely to close.
What’s mostly hype: - “Engagement scores” based on email opens. These are easy to game and rarely tell you much. - Fancy AI predictions unless you’ve got years of clean data.
How to use Convrt for analysis: - Use built-in reports for the basics. Don’t spend hours customizing unless you need to. - If you need something Convrt doesn’t offer, export the raw data and build your own charts. - Share simple reports with the team—nobody reads a 20-page PDF.
6. Coach and Iterate Based on Real Data
A pipeline is only as good as the habits behind it. Use your Convrt data to spot trends, coach reps, and tweak your process.
How to turn analysis into action: - Share insights in your weekly sales meeting. “We’re losing too many deals in Demo—let’s dig in.” - Use data to coach, not blame. If someone’s struggling, help them with stuck deals. - Adjust your pipeline stages if you see gaps or redundancies. Tools should fit your process, not the other way around. - Set one or two goals based on your analysis (e.g., reduce average time in Proposal stage by a week).
Pro tip: If nobody ever updates a certain field or uses a stage, kill it. Less is more.
7. Avoid the Most Common Pipeline Traps
No tool is magic—Convrt included. Here’s what trips up most teams (and what to do about it):
- Zombie deals: Deals that haven’t moved in months. Schedule a quarterly cleanup—close out anything dead.
- Over-optimism: Marking everything as “Likely to Close” to hit your numbers. Be honest, or you’ll get blindsided at the end of the quarter.
- Pipeline bloat: Too many stages, too many fields, too much “just in case” data. Ruthlessly simplify.
- One-person bottleneck: If only the manager updates the pipeline, it’s not a team tool. Everyone needs skin in the game.
Keep It Simple, Keep It Moving
Tracking and analyzing deals in Convrt doesn’t require a Ph.D. or endless reports. The basics—clear stages, honest data, and regular reviews—beat any fancy feature. Set up your pipeline to reflect reality, focus on the few metrics that matter, and clean up as you go. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough. Start simple, iterate, and you’ll actually know where your deals stand. That’s the point.