Spinning Plates: which accounts are on the boil and which are about to drop

A sales team keeps a lot of accounts going at once, much like a performer keeping plates spinning on poles. Some are turning nicely, some need a nudge, and some have already fallen. The Spinning Plates report shows you which is which, so a manager can see at a glance what each rep is chasing and what is slipping.

The report belongs to a tribe, which is one location, branch or business unit inside your organisation. It looks only at that tribe's companies.

Opening the report

1. Open the tribe's CRM.
2. In the menu on the left, under Reports, select Spinning Plates.

Anyone who can open the tribe's Activity Report can open this one. A team member whose CRM access is limited to their own records sees only the companies assigned to them.

Which companies count as plates

A company appears in the report when, during the Window you choose (the last 90 days unless you change it), any of the following happened:

• A rep called it from a call list, logged a communication with one of its contacts, emailed it from a connected mailbox, wrote a note, held a meeting with it, or opened or closed a deal for it.
• The company replied to an email, made an enquiry, or picked up a call that went somewhere.
• It has an open deal, whenever that deal was opened, or a task that is overdue.

Emails sent by a sequence or an automation from a rep's connected mailbox count as that rep chasing the company. Automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages, do not count as a reply. Spam enquiries, contacts that have been deleted, and calls or notes logged by another tribe are left out. A company whose only activity is a task due in the future does not appear yet.

The five kinds of plate

Each company is given exactly one status. The report checks them in the order below and stops at the first one that fits, so a company with a won deal and nothing else open is Landed even if it has also gone quiet.

Whose plate is it?

Each plate belongs to the company's Assigned To rep. When a company has nobody assigned, it belongs to whoever chased it last, and the plates list shows "Chasing, not assigned" under their name so you can tell the difference. A company with no assigned rep that nobody has chased, such as one with only an old open deal, appears under Unassigned.

To make the report reflect your team properly, assign each company to the rep who looks after it. See Assigning companies to reps for how to do this in bulk.

Reading the report

• The five cards across the top count the plates in each status. Select a card to list only those plates, and select it again to show every plate.
• Who is holding what has one row per rep, with a coloured bar showing how their plates split across the five statuses and the value of their open deals. Select a rep to see only their plates; the cards and the list then follow that rep. Select the same rep again to return to the whole tribe.
• The Plates list shows each company with its status, its rep (with who chased it last, when that was somebody else), when it was last touched and how, when it last replied, how many days it has been quiet, its open deals and its next task. Select a company's name to open its profile.
• The list starts with the plates that need attention most: Wobbling first, then Spinning, On the boil, Smashed and Landed, with the biggest open deals at the top of each. Select the Company, Days quiet or Open Pipeline heading to sort by that column instead.

The summary column

The Summary column gives each plate in one sentence. At first it is put together from the figures, for example "Jesse last chased it 15 days ago; no reply yet; $5,500 open and past its close date." Viewing the page also asks for an AI summary written from the company's recent emails, calls, notes, deals and tasks. These are written in the background, so they usually appear the next time you open the report, and sometimes while you are still on the page. When one is ready it replaces the sentence built from the figures, marked with a small sparkle icon.

An AI summary is written only for the plates on the page you are looking at, and is written again after something new happens on the account, or when the company is handed to a different rep, so it always describes the latest activity and only what that rep can see. Until the new one is ready, the sentence built from the figures is shown instead. If no summary can be written for a plate, it keeps the sentence built from the figures until something new happens on the account.

Changing a plate's status yourself

Sometimes you know more than the activity shows. A customer may have told you on the phone that they will sign next month, or the owner may be away. You can set the status yourself:

1. In the Plates list, select the company's status.
2. Choose the status you want.
3. Under Reason, explain why, for example "The owner is on leave until November and asked us to call back then". A reason is required, so the rest of the team knows why the plate says what it does.
4. Select Save.

The plate then shows your status, with "Set by" your name and the reason underneath, and it counts towards that status in the cards and the scoreboard.

Filters

If you have chosen a group in the Working in bar at the top of the CRM, the report covers only that group's companies, and says so under the filters. Your filters are kept in the page address, so you can bookmark a view or send it to a colleague.