--- name: deal-stage-nudges description: Finds deals in your CRM that have sat too long in their current stage, infers the likely blocker from recent engagements, and generates a specific nudge with a recommended next action for each. Use when the user asks "which deals are stuck", "what's aging in pipeline", "nudge me on stalled stages", or runs a recurring deal-hygiene check. license: MIT compatibility: Requires a connected CRM. Read-only — drafts nudges, no writes. metadata: author: Builder.org version: 2.0.0 persona: Operator Owen rave: R3 A4 V4 E4 category: crm --- # Deal Stage Nudges ## What it does Spots deals that have lingered past a healthy time-in-stage, reads the recent engagements to infer why, and hands you one concrete next action per deal. The point is pipeline that moves without a weekly manual review. Read-only: it nudges, it never moves a deal itself. ## When to use - "Which deals are stuck", "what's aging in pipeline", "nudge me on stalled stages". - As a recurring daily or weekly hygiene check. - Not for deals that have gone fully silent for weeks and need a revival campaign; that is `stalled-deal-revival`. This skill is the early-warning system; that one is the rescue. ## Inputs None required. Optional: per-stage day thresholds, owner, pipeline. Works with any CRM your assistant can read (HubSpot, Salesforce, or similar); it only needs deals, stages, and engagement dates. ## The bar - Every flagged deal gets a stated likely blocker and one next action. Flagging without diagnosis is just a slower report. - Blockers are labeled as inferences ("likely awaiting legal, based on the Feb 2 email"), never as facts. - One next action per deal. The rep asked what to do, not for a menu. - Ranked by what it costs to ignore: overdue-ness times deal value, not alphabetical. ## Workflow 1. **Pull open deals** with stage, amount, and days-in-stage. 2. **Apply thresholds.** Defaults: 10 days for early stages, 14 for mid, 21 for late. Early stages get the tightest window because momentum decays fastest before a relationship exists; late stages are allowed longer because legal and procurement genuinely take weeks. All three are overridable. 3. **Diagnose each flagged deal.** Read the last few engagements and classify the likely blocker: no reply, awaiting something from us, awaiting something from them, single-threaded and the thread went quiet, or no visible activity at all. Cite the evidence in a phrase. 4. **Recommend one action per deal.** Matched to the blocker: a specific reply to send, the artifact to deliver, a second contact to loop in, or an honest close-lost proposal when the deal is a zombie. Include a one-line rationale. 5. **Rank and output.** Most overdue and highest value first. If more than ten deals flag, output ten and say how many are behind them. ## Output ``` ## Stage nudges for [date] 1. **[Deal] · $[amount]** · [stage], [N] days in stage (threshold [T]) Likely blocker: [inference, with the evidence in a phrase] Next: [one specific action] 2. ... [N] more deals flagged below the cut. ``` ## Worked example ``` Fictional example. Never reuse these names or numbers in real output. ## Stage nudges for March 3 1. **Fieldstone Payroll platform · $52k** · Contract Sent, 24 days in stage (threshold 21) Likely blocker: awaiting their legal review; their COO said "two weeks" on Feb 6 and it has been 25 days. Next: email the COO a nudge that names the date ("you mentioned two weeks on Feb 6") and offer a redline call this week. 2. **Cobalt Build Co estimating · $36k** · Demo Done, 18 days in stage (threshold 14) Likely blocker: single-threaded; the champion replied to everything until Feb 20, then silence. Next: loop in their VP of Preconstruction with a two-line note referencing the Riverside project, not a "checking in". 3. **Lakeview Dental renewal · $9k** · Negotiation, 16 days in stage (threshold 14) Likely blocker: no activity logged at all since the stage change; likely nothing was actually sent. Next: send the renewal terms today; there is nothing to wait on. 0 more deals flagged below the cut. ``` ## Never - Never present a diagnosis as certain. The rep confirms; the skill infers. - Never recommend "follow up" as the action. Name the artifact, the person, or the sentence. - Never move, edit, or close a deal. Proposing close-lost is allowed; doing it is not. - Never bury a high-value late-stage deal below small early ones because it is less overdue. Cost of ignoring wins ties. ## Recovery - Engagements too thin to diagnose: label the blocker "no visible activity" and make the action "log where this actually stands", which is itself the fix. - Custom pipeline with unfamiliar stage names: map stages to early, mid, and late by their order, apply the matching defaults, and show the mapping in one line. - Everything flags (thresholds too tight for this team's sales cycle): say so, show the distribution of days-in-stage, and suggest thresholds that would flag the true outliers instead. - Nothing flags: report the clean pipeline and the deal closest to its threshold, so the reader still learns where the pressure is building.