What are my winning journey patterns?

Why identifying winning patterns is the fastest way to grow

Most sales teams operate on instinct. Each rep has their own style, their own cadence, their own approach. Some reps close at 35% and others at 15%. The difference is usually not talent. It is process.

When you analyze the deals that closed, you often find a surprisingly consistent pattern. Maybe it is: Google Ads click, form fill, sales email within 2 hours, discovery call within 3 days, proposal within a week, follow-up call on day 10. Deals that follow this pattern close at 40%. Deals that deviate close at 15%.

The pattern already exists in your data. You just need to extract it. Once you do, you can train every rep to follow it, set up automation to enforce it, and measure deviation from it.

What a journey pattern analysis looks for

You are looking for three things across your closed-won deals:

• Common touchpoint sequences. Do most closed deals include a discovery call followed by a demo? Or do they go straight from form fill to proposal? The sequence matters.
• Timing between touchpoints. Is the follow-up call happening on day 3 or day 14? Winning deals often have tighter timing between interactions.
• Channel mix. Do winning deals involve email only, phone only, or a mix? How many of them include a marketing touchpoint (ad click, email campaign) before the first sales touch?

How to find your winning patterns manually

1. 1
   Export your last 25 closed-won deals from HubSpot

   Go to CRM → Deals. Filter by Closed Won, last 90 days. Export with Deal Name, Amount, Create Date, Close Date, and Associated Contact.

2. 2
   Map the activity timeline for each deal

   Open each deal in HubSpot. On the Activity tab, record every interaction in order: first touch type, second touch, third touch, and so on. Note the type (call, email, meeting) and the days between each touchpoint.

3. 3
   Build a pattern matrix in your spreadsheet

   Create columns for Touch 1 Type, Touch 1 Day, Touch 2 Type, Touch 2 Day, etc. Fill in each deal. Then sort and look for repeating sequences. For example: “Email, Call, Meeting, Email, Proposal” might appear in 12 of your 25 deals.

4. 4
   Compare with lost deals

   Do the same analysis for 15-20 closed-lost deals. What sequences are common in lost deals? Often the difference is timing (too slow to follow up) or missing touchpoints (no demo, no follow-up call).

5. 5
   Define the winning playbook

   The most common sequence among won deals, combined with the timing between steps, is your winning playbook. Document it and compare every new deal against it.

What it takes to refine patterns every month

Your winning pattern is not static. It changes as your product evolves, your market shifts, and your team grows. To keep it current:

• Add new closed deals to your pattern matrix each month.
• Check if the winning sequence is still the most common.
• Compare reps who follow the pattern vs. those who deviate.

In practice, this analysis gets done once during a sales offsite and then slowly becomes outdated. The manual data collection is too tedious to repeat monthly.

Or discover your winning patterns automatically

Bottomline connects to your CRM and analyzes the activity timeline of every closed deal. It identifies the most common touchpoint sequences among your won deals and compares them to your lost deals.

Instead of spending 4-6 hours reviewing activity timelines, you get your winning patterns laid out with close rates, timing ranges, and a comparison to losing patterns. Updated every month as new deals close.