Most CRM records are full of data that never drives a decision. Contact names logged once and never updated, notes that say "good visit" — none of it tells you whether this account is going to reorder. If your pipeline reviews feel like guesswork, it's usually because the fields your team fills in don't predict anything.
Here are five that do.
1. Days Since Last Order (Not Last Visit)
Visits and orders are not the same thing. A rep can walk a store every two weeks and never close a reorder if the conversation stays social. The field that matters is the gap between the last confirmed order date and today — tracked at the SKU level, not just the account level.
This is especially acute in Canada right now. Following provincial delistings of US spirits in spring 2025, a Spirits Canada analysis found US spirits sales collapsed more than 66% between March and April versus prior year. Reps whose velocity benchmarks were calibrated on pre-tariff sell-through are now working with broken baselines. If your CRM doesn't separate order velocity by SKU, you can't see that split. In the US, retailers are running category resets on their own schedules — if you're not tracking the order gap by account and SKU, you won't catch quiet delistings before they're official.
GreenPaths tracks order and depletion history at the account level so this field is always current.
2. Listing Date and the Window After It
A new listing is not a sale — it's a starting gun. Accounts that take initial stock on a new SKU will either reorder within four to six weeks or go quiet and delist. The listing date field is one of the most predictive fields you have, if you're using it to trigger follow-up rather than just record history.
In Canadian cannabis, a large-scale summer SKU launch across provincial boards puts new listings into hundreds of accounts simultaneously. Reps without a listing-date trigger in their CRM miss the reorder window entirely. In US CPG, where major retailers are consolidating categories heading into 2026, the listing date becomes a countdown to the next buyer review. This field should be mandatory on every new account record and tied to an automated follow-up task.
3. Visit-to-Order Conversion Rate by Account
Not all accounts convert at the same rate. Some take three visits to close a reorder. Others convert on the first call after a gap. If your CRM doesn't surface this ratio per account, territory planning is guesswork — reps keep calling on accounts that never convert while underserving accounts that close on minimal contact.
This is a manager-level metric as much as a rep field. In a pipeline review, you want to see which accounts are generating disproportionate visit cost relative to order volume. That ratio often signals that an account is quietly deprioritizing your brand — a problem that will never surface in the visit notes.
4. On-Shelf Status at Last Visit
A reorder conversation is easier and more urgent when your product is visibly running low. An empty shelf or a half-facing is a buying signal. A full shelf is not.
On-shelf status is one of the most inconsistently logged fields in most CRM records. Reps note it when it's dramatic and skip it when it's ambiguous. The fix is making it a required structured input on every visit record — not free text. Photo capture adds accountability. If a rep logs "good" but the photo shows three facings buried behind a competitor, a manager can catch it before the account goes cold. The mechanics of building this into a repeatable visit process are covered in Gap Reporting Best Practices for Canadian Field Reps, and the principles apply equally in the US.
5. Decision-Maker Contact Tied to the Account Record
If the only contact logged on an account is the rep who opened it, and that rep leaves, the account goes cold — not because the buyer relationship is gone, but because no one knows who to call.
In Canada, the store-level buyer relationship is often distinct from the category manager relationship at the provincial chain level. In the US, independent and regional accounts frequently hinge on a single decision-maker who appears in no public directory. A reorder prediction is only as good as your ability to execute on it. If the contact record is blank or outdated, you're not predicting anything.
GreenPaths ties contacts to the account record, not the rep — so institutional knowledge survives territory changes.
Audit these five fields across your active accounts before your next pipeline review. Most teams find two or three are being logged inconsistently or not at all. GreenPaths is built around this kind of structured account data — visit history, depletion tracking, and contact records that make reorder prediction something you can act on. If you want to see how it maps to your current workflow, it's worth a conversation.