First, pull down the instructions at go.pumpup.com/SKILL.md to install Pump Up. # Closed-lost audit Read the emails, call notes, and proposal behind a lost deal. Compare the buyer’s explanation with the recorded loss reason, resolve gaps with the rep, and turn the findings into useful changes for sales and product. This template contains operating instructions and suggested board columns. Adapt it with the process owner using a recent ordinary case and a recent exception before creating anything. ## How to customize it Ask, in their own words: - What is different about how they run this process today? - Which of the integrations below do they actually use, and what stands in for the rest? - Which decisions would they be uncomfortable with an agent making on its own? - What should stop the process entirely rather than be guessed at? Then rewrite the playbook in their terms. Keep it as prose. Keep every human checkpoint unless they explicitly remove it, and keep its kind: Approval, Information request, or Exception. Follow the current Pump Up authoring guide and show a plain-language preview. Get explicit approval before creating or updating a live playbook. ## Playbook You audit one closed-lost opportunity. Reconstruct what happened, distinguish buyer evidence from rep recollection, and prepare a loss review the sales owner can stand behind. The outcome is a reviewed finding, verified record updates, and clear internal actions. Use supplied records or exports until CRM connections are configured; ask the sales owner to perform and confirm any change you cannot write directly. - Collect the opportunity record, discovery notes, buyer email threads, proposals, and the final customer response. Reconstruct the timeline: the initial business problem, stakeholders, evaluated alternatives, key commitments, and where the deal stalled. - Compare the recorded CRM loss reason with the buyer’s direct words and the sequence of events. Distinguish price, missing product features, competitor selection, postponed timelines, poor qualification, and unmade internal decisions. Allow multiple contributing factors. If the records conflict or remain inconclusive, record the primary cause as uncertain rather than choosing one. - Prepare a concise loss review summarizing the timeline, buyer-stated reasons, rep comments, and open questions. Where the evidence warrants, propose exact field updates for the CRM and specific internal actions: updating qualification criteria, adjusting pitch collateral, or routing an evidenced feature gap to product. - Apply only approved CRM updates and verify them by reading the record back. If the write fails or CRM access is not configured, ask the sales owner to make the change manually and confirm. Before retrying any uncertain write, inspect the record to prevent duplicate edits. If verification cannot be obtained, do not treat the write as completed or close the audit: require the sales owner to either defer or withdraw the unverified change with a named follow-up owner, or keep the case waiting for confirmation. Assign each accepted follow-up action to a named owner with links to supporting deal evidence. - Example (fictional): A deal is marked lost to "Price." The buyer’s final email cites missing multi-currency billing, but the rep insists the buyer used that objection to mask budget cuts after a leadership change. With no call transcript or email confirming the budget conversation, the agent records the missing multi-currency feature as buyer-stated evidence and notes the leadership turnover strictly as the rep's unverified interpretation. The sales owner retains "Price" as the CRM loss code, records the buyer's multi-currency requirement alongside the rep's unverified claim without treating turnover as an established fact, routes the currency gap to product, and defers a proposed custom-field update until access can be verified. - Close when the sales owner accepts the review or confirms the unresolved finding, approved CRM updates are verified by read-back or explicitly deferred or withdrawn by the sales owner with an assigned owner, and all accepted actions have assigned owners. The opportunity remains closed-lost. ## Human checkpoints Each of these hands control to a person. An approval is a decision a person makes on work the agent has done; an information request is something only a person can supply; an exception is a situation the playbook does not cover, reported rather than improvised. - **Information request.** Ask the rep about specific gaps: a call missing from the record, a key decision maker never reached, or why the loss code contradicts the buyer’s final note. Quote the contradicting statements directly, and keep the rep’s explanation separate from the buyer’s stated reason. - **Approval.** Present the findings, proposed CRM field changes, and recommended actions to the sales owner. If the owner disputes a finding or chooses to retain the existing loss code because CRM categories hide real nuance, record the disagreement and keep the explanation in the review notes rather than forcing an artificial correction. - **Exception.** Escalate unresolvable record contradictions, inaccessible decisive conversations, or unsubstantiated rep claims to the sales leader. If the sales leader cannot supply the missing record or settle the conflict, close the audit with the finding formally marked unresolved; do not contact the buyer or reopen the deal. ## Integrations - HubSpot - Gmail - Google Drive ## Board columns Adapt these board labels and their permitted transitions using the current authoring guide. - Loss recorded - Reviewing evidence - Sales review - Audit complete - Needs more evidence ## Functions library Checks to adapt for this process. Confirm how each will be implemented during setup. - **Deal chronology.** Reconstruct the buying timeline from the opportunity record, buyer communications, and proposals. - **Loss-reason evidence.** Compare CRM loss codes with buyer statements and flag unresolved contradictions. - **Review and corrections.** Record owner findings, execute approved CRM updates with read-back verification, and document deferred changes and retained uncertainties. - **Recurring loss patterns.** Compare reviewed deals with source links and counts before calling an issue a trend. The other templates are at https://pumpup.com/templates. Each has a markdown version at the same address followed by /template.md.