The data behind great co-selling: what calendar evidence reveals

The co-sell premium

Ask any VP of Sales whether cross-functional selling matters and they'll tell you yes, without hesitation. Ask them how much of it is actually happening in their org this week — and most will pause.

That gap between belief and visibility is exactly where revenue leaks out.

When we analyse Microsoft 365 calendar data from B2B sales organisations, one pattern stands out more than any other: deals that involve an SE in at least two meetings have significantly higher close rates than solo AE deals. The difference isn't marginal — in the orgs we've analysed, it's typically 20–30 percentage points.

What the calendar data shows

The Microsoft Graph API gives us a surprisingly precise view of co-sell activity. Every calendar event includes:

• Attendee list (with email domains to distinguish internal from external)
• Organiser
• Meeting duration and recurrence
• Whether it's a Teams call

From this, we can identify which deals are getting multi-functional attention versus which AEs are going it alone. We can see:

• SE touch rate: what percentage of active deals have had at least one meeting with both an AE and a SE present
• CSM pre-close involvement: how early in the cycle customer success is being brought in
• Back-channel collaboration: internal meetings between AE, SE, and CSM ahead of customer calls — a strong predictor of deal quality

The patterns of high performers

Across the orgs we've analysed, the highest-performing quarters share a consistent signature in the M365 data:

1. AEs with the highest attainment had SE involvement in 70%+ of their deals, not 40–50%
2. CSMs were introduced before the final negotiation stage in most enterprise deals — not after
3. Internal prep meetings (AE + SE, 15–30 minutes) happened consistently before customer-facing calls — not ad hoc

None of this is surprising wisdom. What's surprising is how rarely sales leaders can see it in their own organisation in real time.

Why most orgs fly blind on this

CRM data captures outcomes: stage, close date, contract value. It doesn't capture the process — who was in the room, when, and how often.

For that, you need the calendar. And until recently, getting that data required a custom data engineering project that most organisations couldn't justify.

That's the problem Graflo solves. By connecting to your Microsoft 365 tenant via the Graph API, we surface co-sell patterns automatically — by rep, by manager, by region — without anyone having to log anything.

What to look for in your own data

If you're a sales leader trying to improve cross-functional selling, the metrics that matter most are:

• SE touch rate per AE — are some reps consistently under-utilising technical resources?
• Time to first SE involvement — are SEs being brought in early enough to influence the technical evaluation?
• Internal collaboration frequency — do your teams meet internally to prepare, or do they wing it?

The answers are already in your Microsoft 365 data. You just need to look.