Account transitions are a constant reality in any Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy. Whether due to a promotion, a territory realignment, or an employee departure, how you handle the open opportunities during these changes impacts revenue and sales team morale.
The Fullcast Holdouts Policy evolved through close collaboration with our customers. We worked directly with RevOps teams to identify the specific gaps in standard transition logic, resulting in a framework that covers complex real-world scenarios, such as split commissions and rep selection periods, without requiring custom code. Crucially, this policy is intrinsically linked to your GTM plan structure, allowing you to enforce logic that respects the nuances of your different segments.
Note
Before diving into configuration, download this planning worksheet which lists all the questions you’ll need to consider.
This guide captures the strategic insights and best practices discussed during our recent Holdouts Office Hours (recording below). It will help RevOps professionals and Sales leaders design and configure a holdout policy that ensures accurate, compliant, and fair opportunity management.
Jump to Key Topics:
0:00 - Introduction & Agenda
2:05 - The Cost of Manual Holdouts (Real-world "Double Comp" Example)
4:48 - The Policy Framework: Exempt, Eligible, and Ineligible
5:50 - Key Configuration Options (Expiration, Fallbacks, Restrictions)
9:35 - Demo: Configuring Policy Rules & Criteria
16:20 - Customizing Policies by Territory & Segment
20:25 - Automating Opportunity Splits & Team Updates
24:38 - Execution: Building the Salesforce Trigger Flow
31:25 - Execution: Setting up the Cleanup Schedule
36:35 - Live Scenario: Testing Account Transfers & Policy Status
48:55 - Optimizing the Rep Experience & Closing
The Cost of Manual Management
During the session, Tyler Simons, Director of Product, emphasized that manual holdout tracking is often a silent budget killer. When organizations rely on disconnected spreadsheets, calendar reminders, or verbal agreements to manage transitions, critical details inevitably fall through the cracks.
Tyler shared a real-world example where a lack of automation had significant financial consequences. In one instance, a missed transfer deadline on a million-dollar opportunity forced an organization to double-compensate the sales reps involved. Because the manual process failed to trigger the transfer on time, the company had to pay full commission to both the original owner and the new account owner to resolve the dispute.
By automating this policy, you eliminate this ambiguity. You create a transparent, enforceable system where the rules are clear to all parties the moment an account changes hands, preventing costly errors before they happen.
The Policy Framework: Categorizing Opportunities
The foundation of a successful holdout policy is the ability to categorize opportunities correctly. You cannot apply a universal rule to every deal. Fullcast organizes open opportunities into three distinct categories.
1. Exempt Opportunities
These are opportunities the policy should never touch. Even if the account owner changes, these opportunities remain with their current owner indefinitely.
This category is critical for protecting specialized workflows where the opportunity owner differs from the account owner. For example, a Renewal opportunity owned by a specialized Account Manager should not be transferred just because the Account Executive on the account changed.
2. Eligible Opportunities
These are opportunities that qualify for a temporary holdout period based on specific criteria.
This category allows you to grant reps a fair window to close mature deals while ensuring early-stage deals move immediately to the new owner to build their pipeline. For instance, you might define eligibility as any opportunity in a "Commit" stage or with a value greater than a specific threshold.
3. Ineligible Opportunities
Any open opportunity that does not meet the criteria for Exempt or Eligible is considered Ineligible. These are transferred immediately to the new account owner at the moment of the account transition.
Configuration Options for Eligible Opportunities
When configuring the holdout policy, the most time will likely be spent hashing out the details of what you will do with holdouts. This is handled in the Eligible Opportunities section of the policy. As mentioned previously, because all Fullcast policies are tied to a Fullcast GTM plan, building the policy at a specific level in the territory hierarchy means you can set different rules for different segments, regions, or territories. For example, you might enforce a 120-day holdout for Enterprise accounts while restricting Growth accounts to a 30-day holdout.
Core Requirements
At a minimum, the holdout policy must define:
Eligibility Criteria: The logic that defines a valid holdout. This is typically based on stage, amount, or opportunity type.
Expiration Timeframe: How long the holdout lasts. Common timeframes include 30, 60, or 90 days, or fiscal dates such as End of Quarter or End of Year.
Fallbacks and Defaults: A safety mechanism to determine where the opportunity should go if the holdout expires and the new account owner is inactive or missing. Defining a default user ensures no opportunity is ever orphaned.
Advanced Configuration Options
To further refine the process, you can layer on additional logic:
Restrictions: You can limit the volume of holdouts a single rep can maintain. For example, you might set a rule that a rep can only hold onto their top 5 opportunities by value.
Participant Selection Period: Instead of automatically assigning holdouts, you can trigger a selection period. This gives the rep a short window, such as 10 days, to actively select the opportunities they want to keep. Any unselected opportunities are transferred automatically when the selection period ends.
Opportunity Team Updates: You can automate visibility by adding the new account owner to the Opportunity Team immediately, even while the old owner retains opportunity ownership.
Opportunity Splits: You can automate the creation of Opportunity Splits to reflect the shared effort between the holdout owner and the new account owner. This supports accurate commission payouts without manual calculation.
Execution: The Technical Workflow
The Holdouts Policy runs entirely within Salesforce, leveraging Fullcast's engine to process the logic. To execute the policy, you will generally need to configure two separate flows: a Trigger Flow to initiate the assessment and a Cleanup Flow to handle expirations.
1. The Trigger Flow
This flow initiates the Holdout Policy assessment. You define the criteria that determine when the policy should run.
Trigger Events: The most common trigger is an update to the Account record where the Owner ID changes. However, you might also trigger the policy based on other criteria, such as a change in a Territory field or an update to a custom "Transition Status" field.
Considerations:
Entry Criteria: To optimize Salesforce performance, consider adding entry criteria that check if the Account actually has Open Opportunities. Running the logic on accounts without active deals may use unnecessary system resources.
Async Processing: When processing large batches of transfers, such as during a territory realignment or a mass transfer of accounts, consider running this flow Asynchronously. This can help prevent hitting Salesforce transaction limits and improve the user experience.
2. The Cleanup Flow
A separate Scheduled Flow is required to manage expirations. This flow typically runs on a daily cadence to check for expired holdout records and execute the cleanup logic, which transfers the opportunity to the new owner.
3. Visibility and Reporting
Holdout Tag: A Lightning Web Component (LWC) on the Opportunity page provides visual status (Active vs. Expired) and shows the expiration date.
Reporting: You can use the Holdout and Policy Status objects in Salesforce to build reports. This allows management to see upcoming expirations and audit past transfers.
Next Steps
By implementing the Fullcast Holdouts Policy, you move from reactive dispute management to proactive, automated governance.
Review your current criteria: Define what constitutes an Exempt versus Eligible deal in your organization.
Contact your Customer Success Manager: If you are ready to configure these policies, reach out to your CSM or Implementation Consultant for assistance.