The standard pipeline review was designed for software sold to buyers whose year looks the same in March as it does in August. Hotel buyers do not work like that. A resort general manager in peak season is not going to sit through a second demo, and a city hotel finalising next year's budget will not sign anything that is not already in it. Run a generic weekly review on that pipeline and every summer looks like a collapse and every autumn looks like a recovery, when neither is true.

This template fixes that. It adds a buying window to every deal, separates deals that are stalled from deals that are waiting, and gives the monthly review a seasonal view. Copy it into whatever you run the meeting from, a spreadsheet, the CRM or a shared document, and replace the square brackets.

Before the first review: two fields to add

The template depends on two fields that most CRMs do not have by default. Add them to every open deal before you run it.

• Buying window: the month range when this property can realistically decide and implement, based on its market, its peak season and its budget date. Ask for it in discovery.

• Deal status: active, waiting for window, or stalled. Waiting means the prospect has told you when they will decide and the date is in the future. Stalled means nobody knows.

The reasons buying windows vary so much are set out in why hotel tech sales cycles stretch across seasons. The short version: a deal's stage tells you how far it has gone, and the window tells you when it can go further.

Template 1: the weekly deal review

Run this for every deal marked active. Fifteen minutes, one owner per deal, one line each.

Ask three questions of every line, in this order:

1. Does the next step have a date the prospect agreed to, or one we chose?

2. Is the person who decides named, and have we spoken to them?

3. Will the next step happen inside the buying window, or after it closes?

A deal with no agreed date and no named decision-maker is stalled, whatever stage it is in. Move it.

Template 2: the waiting list

Deals the prospect has deferred to a later window go here rather than being closed or left to rot at their old stage. Review the list weekly, but only to check dates.

The contact date matters more than the deferral date. Reaching a hotel the week its quiet period begins is too late; the decision is often made in the weeks before. Peak season is not a sales window, it is a trust window covers what to send while you wait.

Template 3: the monthly seasonal view

Once a month, group every open deal by its buying window instead of by stage. This is the view that tells you whether next quarter is going to work.

Read it from the bottom up. A large no-window row means discovery is not asking the question. A thin next-quarter row with a heavy two-quarters-out row means the team is working deals that cannot close soon and should be prospecting for the nearer window now.

Questions for the monthly review

Which window is thinnest, and what prospecting would fill it before it opens?

Which deals have moved from active to waiting this month, and did the prospect choose that or did we?

Which waiting deals have a contact date in the next four weeks, and who owns each one?

How many deals closed lost this month were lost to timing, and should any of them have been moved to waiting instead?

The last question needs closed-lost reasons that are specific enough to answer it. If yours say other or no decision, fix that first using closed-lost tagging that tells you something.

What the template changes

• Summer stops looking like a pipeline collapse, because waiting deals are counted separately from stalled ones

• The forecast for this quarter only includes deals whose window falls inside it

• Discovery starts recording the buying window, because the review asks for it every week

• Deals deferred by the prospect come back on a date rather than when someone remembers them

Common mistakes

• Using one buying window for every property. A ski resort, a city business hotel and a beach property in the southern hemisphere all decide at different times.

• Letting the team mark stalled deals as waiting. Waiting requires a date the prospect gave you.

• Reviewing the seasonal view only at quarter end, when it is too late to prospect for the next window.

• Treating the waiting list as lost. These are some of the best-qualified deals you have.

The takeaway

A hotel tech pipeline review should ask when each property can buy, not only how far each deal has progressed. Add a buying window and a deal status to every deal, review active deals weekly, keep deferred deals on a dated waiting list, and look at the whole pipeline by window once a month. The numbers stop swinging with the seasons and start telling you which quarter is at risk while there is still time to act.

If the forecast keeps missing and you are not sure whether the cause is seasonality or something earlier in the funnel, the 12-point leak audit takes about twenty minutes and shows where the leak sits.

Frequently Asked Questions