Investors pull your Salesforce data during due diligence. Most founders don't know what they're looking for — or how bad the defaults look.
During Series A or B due diligence, investors regularly request a Salesforce export or direct read access. What they're looking for isn't your biggest deals — it's your operational rigor. A clean, consistent CRM signals that the revenue machine is real. A messy one signals that the numbers might be too.
The specific reports they pull: pipeline coverage by stage, win rate by rep and segment, average sales cycle by deal size, close-date accuracy over time, and loss reasons. All of these are garbage if the underlying records are garbage.
1. Zombie pipeline. Open deals with no activity in 60+ days inflate coverage ratios. A 4x pipeline that's 35% zombies is really 2.6x. Investors do this math.
2. No loss reasons. If your closed-lost deals have no reason recorded, investors can't assess competitive positioning, objection patterns, or whether your win rate is real. This is often the first thing they check.
3. Inconsistent stage definitions. If "Proposal Sent" contains deals from day one of outreach through signed LOI, the stage data is meaningless. Investors use stage velocity to forecast — if your stages don't mean anything, the forecast model breaks.
4. Close-date histories. Most CRMs log every close-date change. Investors look at how often close dates slip, by how many days, and whether it's concentrated in specific reps or deal sizes. Repeated slippage is a process signal, not just a rep problem.
If a raise is 3+ months out, the right sequence is:
If the raise is imminent, prioritize coverage accuracy and loss reasons — those are what get pulled first.
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