Holdout Policy Configuration


Holdout Policy Configuration

When an account transitions from one sales rep to another, it is often customary to permit the departing rep to continue working on ongoing opportunities. Usually referred to as holdout (or holdover) policies, these arrangements allow the outgoing representative to retain ownership of the opportunity for a specified period of time, typically matching the length of an average sales cycle. If the deal is not closed in this timeframe, the open opportunities are passed on to the incoming sales rep. Fullcast’s Holdout Policy is designed to support the automation of this process. 

Prerequisite for Managing Holdouts

The creation of the policy happens in the Fullcast environment, but the execution of the policy happens in the Salesforce environment. For any policy to be executed, the following steps are necessary: 

  1. Configure a Flow in your Salesforce environment. 
  2. Configure the Policy in Fullcast.
  3. Create a Scheduler for the Holdout Policy. 

Configure the Holdout Policy in the Motion Module

Holdout Selection Criteria

The first step is to define which open opportunities qualify for holdout status by specifying eligibility criteria. Common restrictions ensure that holdout opportunities receive sufficient attention for the best customer experience. These restrictions may include limiting the number of opportunities held by the outgoing rep or focusing on later-stage or higher-value opportunities. 

Stage 1: Adding Condition to Select Open Opportunities

In order to execute the holdout policy action effectively, it is essential to filter open opportunity records. To access your opportunities, go to Motion > Review Policies. The, configure the selection criteria by specifying qualifying conditions. 

  1. Click on the Add new Policy button. 
  2. Find Holdouts and click on Add Policy
  3. Expand the Open Opportunities section. 

Note: You can add additional conditions or groups by clicking the plus (+) icon and selecting the appropriate option from the dropdown menu. 

  1. Check the box to limit the number of open opportunities assigned to a specific Sales rep and define how the content is sorted and by what criteria. 

For Example: Amount is greater than 5000 and Stage does not equal Prospecting, where “Amount” and “Stage” are fields in the Opportunity records.

  1. Check the box to apply this policy only to open opportunities where the opportunity owner is the same as the outgoing account owner, if applicable. 
  2. 6. Click Save Change

The next step in the process involves configuring the specifics of the holdout and determining the action to be taken: 

For Opportunities Meeting the Criteria

  • Choose the duration of the holdout period during an ownership change. 
  • If the holdout expires while the opportunity is still open, specify whether the opportunity should be assigned to the account owner or to someone in a specific role. 

For Opportunities Not Meeting the Criteria

  • All open opportunities that do not meet the qualifying criteria outlined above can be promptly assigned to either the account owner or to someone with a specific role. 

Stage 3: Exception Handling

  1. A default user can be selected from the dropdown menu to manage situations where the designated person for assigning open opportunities is unavailable or deactivated in the system. In such cases, the opportunity will be assigned to the default user. 
  2. If the ownership of the account changes multiple times while active holdouts are in place, you have the option to specify how this scenario should be managed. You can choose to either retain the existing holdout or overwrite it using the dropdown menu. 

Configure the Salesforce Flow

A Salesforce flow is used to call into the holdout policy at the appropriate time based on the criteria specified in the flow. Below is the basic configuration of the flow.

Entry Criteria

  1. Create a new record-triggered flow.
  2. Select the object as “Account” since the trigger will be based on changes in account ownership. 
  3. Configure the flow to execute only when there are updates made to the account record. 
  4. Define the entry conditions to initiate the flow specifically when there is a change in the account owner. If there are additional specific entry criteria, incorporate them to prevent unnecessary execution of the flow and holdout policy. 
  5. Optimize the flow for actions and related records. 

  1. Add an action element which calls into the Policy Handle.

  2. Set the Policy Type as “HoldoutPolicy.” Note this is case sensitive and should not contain spaces. 
  3. The RecordId refers to the identifier of the record that triggered the flow. 
  4. Define InputVal1 as the tag used to match with the corresponding policy in motion. 
  5. InputVal3 must be “{!$Record__Prior.Owner.Id}” and is mandatory. Failure to provide this value will result in an exception logged as ‘Input Value 3 Owner Id cannot be null.”
  6. InputVal5 is optional and used to retrieve Account Teams. It can be either true or false, false being the default. 
  7. Ensure that Territory Routing Setup is available if InputVal5 is set to True. Otherwise, an exception will be logged as ‘The Territory Routing Setup needs to be available to Fetch Account Teams.’
  8. If InputVal5 is set to False, no request is sent to the Fullcast App, and the execution proceeds without interaction. 

  1. After completing this element, save and activate the flow.

Account- Holdouts Policy Execution Status will look like below:

Oppty - Holdouts Policy Execution Status:

Configuring the Fullcast Job

The Fullcast Job is also known as the Fullcast Scheduler. This is a feature which can be used to trigger and record triggered automation at a specified interval. This is similar to the Scheduled Flows in Salesforce, but you can choose the option to run these more often than once per day. Click here to learn more about the scheduler.

For the Holdout Policy, a Fullcast Job is used to clean up expired holdouts. 

  1. Go to the Fullcast Job Object. Note: If you do not see the Fullcast Job Object after clicking on the nine dots in Salesforce, you will need to create a tab for it. 
  2. Create a new Fullcast Job with the following details: 
    1. Job Name: Holdout Policy
    2. Object Name: Account
    3. Although Spark Field and Spark Field Value are required in the UI, they are not used for the Holdout Policy Job. Typically, we use the Description field and input any desired value in Spark Field Value. Ensure that the Spark Field references an actual field’s API name. 
    4. ExecutePolicy: HoldoutPolicy
    5. Start Time: Choose the desired start time. 
    6. Frequency: Set to 1440, though this can be adjusted to a more frequent interval if preferred. 
    7. Batch: We recommend starting with around 20, as this will affect the Opportunity Owner. 
  3. Enabled: Set to True.

  4. Navigate to Setup -> Custom Metadata Types -> Fullcast Policy Setting -> Scheduler Job Frequency. Confirm that this is less than the Frequency used in the Holdout Policy Job.

  5. From the main Fullcast Job Tab, select the Holdout Policy Job and then select "Start Scheduler".

The Holdout Policy is configured and ready for testing.


Considerations

After the holdout policy expires and the Fullcast job updates open opportunities. The Holdout Owner on the Opportunity Team will remain and the expiration date will be removed.

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