Deal view vs account view
The same company, seen two ways. One of them is a snapshot of old conversations. The other is a list of people you can actually write to.
A CRM full of closed deals looks like a re-engagement list and is not one. The brief was "pull the contacts attached to each deal". That takes an afternoon and produces something almost useless, because a deal-attached contact is a snapshot of one conversation on one date.
Toggle below. Northwind is an illustrative company with three closed opportunities across three years.
Why the account view wins
The person who signed a sponsorship in 2024 may have left. The person who blocked one may have been replaced by someone who would not have. And the four other people at that company who never touched a deal are invisible to the deal view entirely, even though one of them now owns the budget.
The outcome reasons still matter, they just attach to the account rather than the person. "This company said no in 2023 on budget" is useful context for everyone who works there now. "Marcus said no in 2023" is only useful if Marcus is still there and still deciding.
The first version answered the question I was asked. The second answered the question underneath it. That gap is most of the job.
At real scale
On the actual engagement: 1,056 closed sponsorship opportunities, of which 826 carried contact emails, resolving to only 306 unique people. After validation,294 were mailable. The final dataset was654 rows across 40 columns, joining deals to account-level contacts with the won and lost reasons carried alongside.
The company above is written for this page. Real client records are not published. The structure, the reasoning and the scale figures are from the engagement.