Implementing a Closed/Lost Reason on Opportunity

A recent blog post by Jared Baker of Cloud My Biz suggests including a Lost Reason picklist field on your Opportunities to assist with understanding why some deals don’t close and allowing you to focus on better quality deals.  Here’s an overview of how I have implemented that for my Sales team.

Create a Picklist of Closed/Lost Reasons

Choose reasons that are meaningful to your organization and will provide useful groupings for your Reports and Dashboards.  Here’s my complete picklist for Lost/Cancelled Reason:

In addition to a custom picklist field for Lost/Cancelled Reason, I also added these fields:

Field	Type	Description
Trigger_Lost__c	Checkbox	Use button/link to set this field to trigger the Closed Lost Process Builder and control the Reason picklist values
Closed_Lost_Notes__c	Text Area	Additional details on why the deal was lost
Competitor_Lost_To__c	Picklist	List of competitors

Special Processing Note:

I share the Visualforce page and fields outlined in this post to also handle reasons we might Cancel an Opportunity after it has been Closed Won rather than Lost.  The Closed_Lost_Reason__c field is a Dependent Picklist field controlled by the value of Trigger_Lost__c.  I control what selections are available based on the value of the Trigger Lost field.

For more information on Dependent Picklists see:

Dependent Picklists

Try It Out: Create a Dependent Picklist

Add a Custom Button to Trigger the Lost Processing

My Lost button executes some JavaScript that sets my Trigger Lost field to True and opens a custom Visualforce page to collect data for my Reason, Notes and Competitor fields.

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/31.0/connection.js")}

var myquery = "SELECT Id, Name, Trigger_Lost__c FROM Opportunity WHERE Id = '{!Opportunity.Id}' limit 1";

sforce.connection.sessionId = "{!$Api.Session_ID}";
result = sforce.connection.query(myquery);
records = result.getArray("records");

var myObject = records[0];
var updateRecord = new Array();

myObject.Trigger_Lost__c = true;
updateRecord.push(myObject);

result = sforce.connection.update(updateRecord);

if(result[0].getBoolean("success")){
window.location = "/apex/Opportunity_Lost?id=" + "{!Opportunity.Id}";
}else{
alert('Could not Trigger Process: '+result);
} 

Provide a Visualforce Page to Collect Details for your Lost Fields

I created a simple page with only the fields I wanted to capture when setting an Opportunity to Lost.

<!--
Shared Visualforce page used to present and collect reason for Opportunity
being set to either Closed Lost or to Cancelled.
Closed Lost Reason is a dependent picklist based on the value of Trigger Lost

Eric Smith - GWI - May 2016
-->
<apex:page standardcontroller="Opportunity">
<apex:messages />
<apex:sectionheader title="{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.label} Edit" subtitle="Lost/Cancelled Opportunity"/>

<chatter:feedwithfollowers entityId="{!Opportunity.Id}"/>

<apex:form >
<apex:pageblock mode="edit" title="{!$ObjectType.Opportunity.label} Edit">
<apex:pageblockbuttons >
<apex:commandbutton value="Save" action="{!Save}"/>
<apex:commandbutton value="Cancel" action="{!Cancel}"/>
</apex:pageblockbuttons>

<apex:pageblocksection title="Lost/Cancelled Details" showheader="true" columns="1">
<apex:outputtext label="Stage" value="{!Opportunity.StageName}"/>
<apex:pageblocksectionitem />
<apex:inputfield value="{!Opportunity.Closed_Lost_Reason__c}" required="true"/>
<apex:pageblocksectionitem />
<apex:inputfield value="{!Opportunity.Closed_Lost_Notes__c}" required="false" style="width: 500px; height: 100px"/>
<apex:pageblocksectionitem />
<apex:inputfield value="{!Opportunity.Competitor_Lost_To__c}" rendered="{!Opportunity.Trigger_Lost__c}" required="true"/>
<apex:pageblocksectionitem />
<!-- This next field needs to be on the page for the dependent picklist to work -->
<!-- 0px keeps it from displaying or being changed -->
<apex:inputfield value="{!Opportunity.Trigger_Lost__c}" style="width: 0px; height: 0px"/>
</apex:pageblocksection>

</apex:pageblock>
</apex:form>

</apex:page>

Special Processing Note:

Competitor Lost To is not rendered if I’m processing a Cancel rather than a Lost and Trigger Lost is on the page because it controls the values displayed in the Closed Lost Reason picklist.

Adding More Control with a Validation Rule

I didn’t want my users to be able to select Other as their reason without explaining why so I added a Validation Rule requiring 50 or more characters in the Closed Lost Notes field if they selected Other as their reason.

Process Builder kicked off by Trigger_Lost__c

When the Lost button Javascript executes, it set the Trigger_Lost__c checkbox field to True and saves the Opportunity record.  That record change causes my Stage: Set Closed Lost Process Builder to execute.  The only action I’m currently doing there is setting my Opportunity Stage to Closed Lost.

How do I use this Data?

Here’s a monthly report I run that lists all of my Lost or Cancelled Opportunities.  It is organized by what Stage the Opportunity was in before it was changed to Lost.

Go ahead and give this one a try

Adding this feature to your org will give you some good practical experience with Custom Buttons, Visual Force pages, Dependent Picklists, Validation Rules, Process Builder and Reports.