The Deals That Went Quiet When He Quit

A top rep gave his two weeks' notice on a Tuesday. Good guy, no drama, just took another opportunity. By Thursday, ops asked me to help figure out where his fourteen open deals actually stood — turned out about half of them existed nowhere but his head, notes typed into the CRM after the fact and vague ("checking in," "will follow up") because logging real detail felt like busywork for someone chasing quota.

He wasn't hiding anything. He just never had a reason to write it down properly — the deal was his, he knew where it stood, and that was enough right up until it wasn't.

Three of those fourteen never got followed up on again. Nobody decided to lose them. They just belonged to someone who wasn't there anymore, and nobody realized they were now unowned until a prospect called asking why nobody had gotten back to them.

If your best rep left tomorrow with two weeks' notice, would his open deals actually transfer — or just quietly go cold?