Why are Deal Review Meetings important?

Deal Review Meetings are important because they help to ensure alignment between sales reps and leadership, improve forecast accuracy and identify risks and blockers early.

What are the biggest challenges with Deal Review Meetings?

The biggest challenges with Deal Review Meetings are getting sales reps to clean up their deals before the meeting and getting them to come prepared. Too often, the meeting ends up being a data review session, rather than a strategy session.

How can Data Parrot help with Deal Review Meetings?

Data Parrot can help with Deal Review Meetings by providing a way to quickly and easily review deals and ensure they are up to date. It also provides a way to get insights into the deals and the sales process.

How to Run Effective Deal Reviews

Deal Review Meetings are where sales teams and their managers evaluate deals to assess strategy, risks and next steps with the goal of increasing win rates and closing more deals faster.

But most deal review meetings end up wasting time digging through and updating the CRM data. Sales people struggle to keep their deal data up to date.

We've all heard it: "Would you rather me sell customers or do data entry?"

Imagine starting a Deal Review Meeting with the confidence that your HubSpot deals are up to date and accurate. The meeting then becomes a true sales strategy session focused on increasing win rates and closing more deals faster, not chasing down data quality issues.

With Data Parrot, you can quickly and easily ensure that your deals are up to date before your Deal Review, and even use Data Parrot to help run the meeting.

Meet Deal Pulse Mode - a 'gamified' way to fly through deals, reviewing them and updating them in seconds.

Deal Pulse Mode is fast, intuitive, and built to minimize time spent on data entry.

There are 3 main ways to use Deal Pulse Mode:

Pre-Meeting Preparation: Have your sales team use Deal Pulse Mode to update their deals before the meeting starts.
Lead a Deal Review Meeting: Use Deal Pulse Mode to lead a Deal Review Meeting with your sales team.
Clean Up Deals before a Board Meeting: Review and update the most important sales deals so your HubSpot dashboards are accurate.

Pre-Meeting Preparation

Starting your Deal Review Meeting with up to date deals means more time talking about winning deals, not chasing down data quality issues.

When your deals are up-to-date before the meeting starts:

Meetings Run Smoother: No one wastes time fixing details that should've been caught earlier.
Focus on Sales Strategy: The meeting can be a true strategy session focused on winning more deals faster.
Problems Get Caught Early: You can spot issues (like a stalled deal) and address them before the meeting.

Time in meetings is time not selling - the shorter and more impactful the Deal Review Meeting, the better for the company.

With Data Parrot, your sales team can use Deal Pulse Mode to rapidly get their deals up to date before the meeting starts.

Polly Says...

Before the meeting, have your sales team use Deal Pulse Mode to update their deals, adjust close dates, stages, and amounts to make sure they are accurate.

Step by Step Guide to Using Deal Pulse Mode for your Sales Team

1. Go to Deal Pulse (or AI Forecast)

To start Deal Pulse Mode, go to either Deal Pulse (opens in a new tab) or AI Forecast (opens in a new tab) in the Data Parrot app.

Deal Pulse Page in Data Parrot

2. Filter to the Deals you want to Review

Before starting Deal Pulse Mode, you should filter to the deals you want to review. Do you want all deals? Only deals closing soon? Deals with high customer intent? Deals with no activity?

There are many options - to build your filters, you can use:

Main Filters: Filter by Pipeline(s), Deal Owner(s), and Team(s). Available at the top of the page.
Deal Pulse Filters: Filter by AI Analysis categories, Engagements, and more. Available above the Deal Table (or Forecast Chart).

Tip: You can save your filters as presets to recall later.

Once you have your filters set - click the green "Start Deal Pulse Mode" button to kick things off.

3. Review Deals Fast

One you have started Deal Pulse Mode, you will see 4 major sections:

Left Panel: the deals to review
Top Bar: Session stats (Avg Review Time per Deal, Total Time, and Total Deals Reviewed) and changes to the Forecast as a result of any deal changes made. Click View All to see all the changes.
Main Section: The deal workspace showing the deal you are reviewing
Bottom Action Bar: Update HubSpot properties (click 'confirm'), and create Notes/Tasks directly in HubSpot.

4. How to Review a Deal

Step 1: Scan the Deal Workspace - read the summary, check the deal health and status. Step 2: Review the AI feedback on "Why We Will Win" and "Why We Will Lose" Step 3: Expand any AI Feedback for additional details Step 4: Review the timeline history - expand any row for more details Step 5: Click the Deal Name to go into HubSpot directly if needed

5. Taking Action on Deals

Once you have reviewed a deal, it's time to take action. There are two major actions you can take:

Update the deal properties (close date, stage, amount) - simply set the new value, click confirm, and HubSpot is immediately updated.
Set a Plan - create Tasks/Notes from the Action bar to launch HubSpot and set the action plan for the deal.

6. Impact on your Forecast

As you update deals, Data Parrot keeps track of the impact on your forecast. At the top right of the screen, you can see the next 3 months and the impact (+/-) based on the changes made.

Click "View All" to see the full impact on your forecast.

Forecast Changes as Deal Review Progresses

Lead a Deal Review Meeting

It's very common to have a Deal Review Meeting with the entire sales team to encourage collaboration and ensure everyone is on the same page.

With Data Parrot, you can use Deal Pulse Mode via screen share to lead the meeting.

How to Use Deal Pulse Mode to Lead a Deal Review Meeting

Every Revenue Leader has their own style, so we've designed Deal Pulse Mode to be flexible.

For example, you can filter by:

pipelines (e.g. new business, renewals, upsells)
deal owner if you are coaching a specific rep
close date if you are in a rush to finalize your next 90 day forecast
Deal Quality (AI Health, Customer Intent, Competitive Position, Sales Performance)
Deal Hygiene (Close Date Confidence, Deal Stage Confidence)

It's all too common that the Deal Review Meeting ends before you've had a chance to review all the deals.

By running multiple Deal Pulse Mode sessions, you can ensure you focus on the critical deals for you in that moment and then work backwards.

Examples of Deal Pulse Mode Sessions

Try breaking your review sessions into chunks based on your priorities. Here are some effective examples:

Session 1: Deals closing this month, late stage, over a certain amount, Medium or higher AI Health
Session 2: Deals closing this month, any stage, any amount, any AI Health
Session 3: Deals closing 30-60 days out, any stage, any amount, any AI Health
and so on!

How to Review a Deal

When reviewing a deal in Deal Pulse Mode, you can see the entire timeline history of the deal. It is not just the engagements, it is also the key property changes such as amount, close date, stage, and more.

This gives you a full picture of the deal and how it has evolved.

While reviewing a deal, look out for:

Multiple Close Date Changes: does this deal keep sliding?
Stage Regression: Has this deal regressed?
Close Date Confidence: Does the AI believe the close date is accurate?
True Deal Health: Is there a sea of red engagements in the timeline (red = negative)?
Customer Intent/Compelling Event: Is this customer a tourist or a real buyer?

These are just a few of the signals visible on the Deal page.

As you strategize with the sales team, you can take the following actions:

Update the close date, stage and amount
Create Notes to capture the conversation
Create Tasks to follow up on the deal

Impact on Forecast

As you go through the deals and update close date and amount, the forecast bar chart at the bottom left will update to show the impact on the forecast.

The dark green bar is the original forecast. The light green bar is the new forecast after the changes.

Each month in the bar chart shows the net amount change.

This openly reveals to you and the team the net impact of the changes, ultimately encouraging accuracy and alignment.

Clean Up Deals Before a Board Meeting

Sometimes you need to ensure your deal data is accurate before a Board Meeting. You've instructed the sales team to get their deals up to date, but now you need to make sure they did it.

With Data Parrot, you can ensure key deals are updated and accurately reflected in your HubSpot dashboards.

How to update deals before a Board Meeting:

Go to Deal Pulse (or AI Forecast)
Filter to the deals you want to update (next 90 days, mid/late stage, high customer intent, new business pipeline, etc)
Start the session
Validate the key properties of the deal are correct and adjust as needed
Confirm the changes

The bar chart will update to show the impact on the forecast.

You can also create Notes and Tasks directly in HubSpot to ensure the sales team follows up on the changes.

Next Steps

Learn more about Deal Pulse Mode
See if your pipeline is growing or shrinking with Pipeline Trends
Reveal key hidden trends with Research Trends including top customer requests

Custom AI Properties in HubSpot How to Improve the Data Parrot AI