Deals with seven-person buying committees were tracked as a list of unrelated contacts. Reps could not see who was unengaged, and forecasting had no way to distinguish a well-covered deal from a single-threaded one.
STUDY 08 / 30 · ANONYMISED · NDA · SALES AUTOMATION · MUNICH · SERIES B
SALES AUTOMATION · MUNICH A CRM view built around the buying group, not the contact.
RoleLead designer
Timeline14 weeks
Team2 designers, 1 PM, 2 frontend, 1 solutions architect
VerticalEnterprise sales workspace · DACH manufacturers
Made the buying group the primary object. Contacts render as roles within it, with coverage, relationship strength and last-touch shown structurally rather than as a list.
Single-threaded deals became visible for the first time and were worked or disqualified. Forecast accuracy rose without any change to the forecasting model.
41%SINGLE-THREADED DEALS IDENTIFIEDof open pipeline
74%MULTI-THREADED @ CLOSEfrom 29%
83%FORECAST ACCURACYfrom 56%
THE ARGUMENT
Why the obvious solution was wrong.
The study matters because the product problem was reframed before the interface was polished.
Every enterprise CRM stores contacts and deals and relates them with a join table. That schema is not wrong, but it produces an interface in which the buying committee - the thing that actually decides - has no representation. A rep looking at a deal sees a list of six names in no particular structure and cannot tell at a glance that the person who signs has never been contacted.
The buying group became a real object with role slots derived from the client's own won-deal analysis: economic buyer, champion, technical evaluator, blocker, legal, procurement, end user. Each slot is filled, empty or at risk, and the whole group renders as a single compact map. Relationship strength comes from touch recency, seniority of the rep who owns it and reciprocity of contact, so a slot filled by a single unanswered email reads visibly weaker than one held by a champion. Forty-one percent of the open pipeline turned out to be single-threaded on the day we shipped it.
THE INTERFACE CRAFT
The interaction, rendered as a working product surface.
The specimen below is code-native and uses the study's own design logic. The client interface remains protected.
SALES AUTOMATION
BUYING GROUP
DESIGN DECISIONS
Positions we would defend.
Each decision names the principle and the product consequence, not a stylistic preference.
The committee is the object
Modelling contacts and inferring the committee produces an interface that cannot show coverage. Model the committee directly.
Activity is not relationship
A count of logged emails measures rep effort. Reciprocity measures whether anyone answered.
Show the empty slots loudest
The most valuable information in an enterprise deal is who has not been contacted. Design for the absence.
PRODUCT LEADER READOUT
What transfers, and what should remain specific to this product.
A case study is useful when its operating principle travels without turning the original interface into a template.
Read the operating condition
For Enterprise sales workspace · DACH manufacturers, the transferable lesson is not a copied screen. It is the condition the interface had to make legible: Seven role slots rendered as a compact structural map. Filled, empty and at-risk states legible in under a second. Rebuild that visibility for your own roles, risk, terminology, and operating cadence.
Protect the design rule
Modelling contacts and inferring the committee produces an interface that cannot show coverage. Model the committee directly. Keep that rule in the acceptance criteria, component states, and production QA record so later visual cleanup cannot erase why the interaction exists.
Measure behaviour after ship
The evidence record is 41% for single-threaded deals identified, of open pipeline. Recreate the baseline and outcome window before rollout, segment the result by role and context, and state clearly what the measure cannot prove.
RESEARCH RECORD
The work behind the interface.
These artefacts connect the final interaction back to the evidence and product model that produced it.
Won-deal role analysis
Analysed 180 closed-won deals to derive the seven roles that actually appeared, replacing a generic nine-role template nobody used.
Coverage-to-outcome model
Correlated slot coverage at each stage against close rate; six-of-seven coverage more than doubled win rate.
Strength algorithm design
Built and tuned the relationship-strength computation with the client's RevOps lead against known-good deals.
Map legibility test
Timed recognition of under-covered deals across four visual treatments; the winning map was read correctly in 0.9 seconds.
“We found out that four in ten of our open deals had one contact. On the first day.”
CRO, industrial software · under NDA
NEXT STUDY · 09 / 30 · SALES AUTOMATION