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Home / Wiki / Revenue & Deals

Mark a deal as Lost

Updated May 2026

You'll learn how to: Move a deal into the Lost stage with a loss reason that feeds your future Win/Loss post-mortems.

Time: 1 minute. Spend it on the reason. Future-you will thank you.

Steps

  1. Open Revenue in the sidebar.
  2. Find the deal.
  3. Drag the card to your pipeline's Lost column (or open the deal canvas and change the stage selector to Lost).
  4. A dialog asks for:
    • Close date (required).
    • Loss reason (required). Pick from the workspace's reason list, or add a free-text note.
    • Lost to (optional). If the buyer went with a competitor, name them. Builds the competitive intelligence on that competitor over time.
  5. Click Mark as Lost.

The card moves into Lost. A toast confirms.

Loss reasons that actually help

Generic reasons ("budget", "timing", "no fit") are useless three quarters later. Specific reasons compound. Examples:

  • "Buyer's CFO killed it at the final step. Champion lost political capital."
  • "We were 30 days late shipping the proposal."
  • "Competitor X already had ongoing relationship with the buyer's COO."
  • "Buyer pivoted away from the use case during our sales cycle."
  • "We tried to sell strategy; they wanted execution."

The Win/Loss Post-Mortem coaching canvas pulls the reason directly when you run a retrospective, so specificity here pays off later.

What happens after

  • Deal moves into Lost. Card shows a red Lost badge.
  • Loss reason recorded against the deal record.
  • "Lost to" populates the competitor's profile if you specified one.
  • Workspace win rate updates.
  • Any contacts on this deal stay in their rhythms (they don't get auto-removed just because the deal lost).
  • The deal's activity timeline records the close.

Reactivating a lost deal

Sometimes "lost" becomes "won later". If the buyer comes back:

  1. Open the lost deal.
  2. Change the stage selector to an active stage.
  3. The deal goes back into the active pipeline. Loss reason and close date are kept as history on the canvas.

You can also clone the deal as a new opportunity if you want a clean slate while preserving the lost one as a record.

If something goes wrong

  • Symptom: "Lost column won't accept my drop." → Fix: Loss reason is required. Either complete the dialog when it appears, or open the deal canvas and fill the loss reason inline before changing stage.
  • Symptom: "I see no Lost stage." → Fix: Your pipeline needs a stage with stage_type = 'lost'. Ask an admin to add one in pipeline settings.
  • Symptom: "I marked the wrong deal as Lost." → Fix: Open the deal, change the stage back to an active stage. Loss data stays as history but the deal is active again.
  • Symptom: "The loss-reason dropdown is empty." → Fix: Your workspace's loss reason list isn't configured. Admins can configure it in pipeline settings. In the meantime, free-text the reason.

Related: Mark a deal as Won | The deal canvas | Win/Loss Post-Mortem coaching.