Which deals in your pipeline are real?

Ask what the buyer did last

In the pipeline review, one of your reps says "I'd say 80%" about a deal whose buyer nobody has heard from in six weeks. The close date has moved and two emails have gone out, so the record looks busy. You keep the deal in, because the rep knows the account. When the quarter ends short, that deal and a handful like it are still open.

A sales pipeline looks healthier than it is when its stages record what your reps did. A deal moves to Proposal when the proposal goes out, asked for or not, and to Negotiation when the rep sends a revised price.

So build each stage on a buyer step, something the buyer did that you can check, and give each stage a time limit, taken from how long your won deals usually stayed in it. In every review, ask what the buyer did last and when. If that was longer ago than the limit, the deal has gone stale, and its rep calls the buyer this week. After those calls, count the real deals, the ones still moving plus those with a next step booked, and put that number next to the CRM total.

What should each stage mean?

Go through your sales pipeline stages and ask who had to do something for a deal to reach each one. Often it is only your rep.

Make every buyer step something you can check, such as a date, a name or a document. If a rep tells you the buyer was keen, you have to take their word for it. If the buyer sent the floor plans and named the director who signs, it is in the record.

When a deal has only the rep step for its stage, move it back to the stage whose buyer step it does meet. If nobody asked for the proposal, the deal goes back to Discovery until the buyer asks for one and says what it must cover. Expect fewer deals in Proposal and Negotiation after the first review like this.

When does a deal go stale?

Look at how long the deals you won in the last six months stayed in each stage. If a buyer has gone longer than that without a step, the deal is stale, however busy the record looks.

Take [company], which sells and installs warehouse racking for logistics firms and wholesalers. The company, its pipeline, the reviews, the call and the numbers are an example, not real data. Marta runs the sales team and reviews each rep's deals every Monday. Of the 10 deals the team won in the last six months, 8 left Negotiation within two weeks, so two weeks is their Negotiation limit. Their Discovery and Proposal limits come from the same won deals.

Lea, one of Marta's reps, has a €60,000 deal in Negotiation with [logistics firm], racking for their new warehouse. Six weeks ago Peter, their operations manager, went through the proposal with her on a call and said they would decide in three weeks. That decision date passed three weeks ago. Since then Lea has moved the close date to the end of next month and sent two emails, four and five weeks after that call. Neither got a reply. Peter's last buyer step is six weeks old, so against the two-week limit the deal has been stale for four weeks.

Only a buyer step resets the clock. The moved close date and the two emails are rep steps, and the close date is a field Lea fills in, while the decision date was Peter's own. His deal is in the right stage and stale at the same time. He went through the proposal and named a date, which is the buyer step for Negotiation, and then stopped.

What do you ask in the review?

Here is the old review of that deal. It may sound familiar.

Marta: "Lea, [logistics firm]. Where are we?"

Lea: "Still looking good. Peter liked the proposal, they just need a bit more time. I've moved the close date to the end of next month. I'd say 80%."

Marta: "OK, keep it in. Next one."

Nothing Lea says is untrue. But "Where are we?" asks how she feels about the deal, so she answers with a feeling and a percentage, and the moved close date sounds like progress. Marta has nothing to check, and the €60,000 stays in this quarter's forecast.

In the new review, Marta changes one question.

Marta: "Lea, [logistics firm]. What did Peter last do, and when?"

Lea: "Six weeks ago he went through the proposal with me and said they would decide in three weeks. Since then I've sent two emails. No reply."

Marta: "So his last step is six weeks old, and his own date passed three weeks ago. Our won deals usually left Negotiation within two weeks. Can you call him this week?"

Lea: "I'll call him tomorrow at 10."

This time Lea answers with something Peter did and when he did it, and Marta can hold that against the two weeks. She doesn't ask for a percentage, and the deal stays with Lea, who knows Peter.

That Monday, Marta and her reps asked the same question about all 24 open deals in the CRM, together worth €1,200,000, three times the €400,000 left to close this quarter. Of these, 9 deals worth €400,000 had the buyer step for their stage within its time limit, so they were moving. The other 15 were stale or had only the rep step for their stage. All 15 went on this week's call list, and the table shows each deal in the stage it had before the review.

Proposal held the most deals that were not moving, 7 of its 10. Sending a proposal takes your rep one email, while asking for one takes the buyer a decision.

What do you say to a quiet buyer?

Lea calls Peter on Tuesday at 10. A proposal sent last week would need a different call, the one in our post on why your quotes go unanswered. After six weeks of silence, it goes like this.

Lea: "Hi Peter, it's Lea from [company]."

Peter: "Oh, hi Lea."

Lea: "When we went through the racking proposal six weeks ago, you planned to decide in three weeks. Where does it stand on your side? If plans have changed, or it has gone to someone else, that's fine. I'd just rather know."

Peter: "Honestly, it's on hold. Our finance director wants to see next year's budget first."

Lea: "So it's on hold until your finance director has seen next year's budget. When is the budget decided?"

Peter: "Mid-January."

Lea: "Then shall I call you on the third Tuesday of January, at 10?"

Peter: "Yes, that's fine."

Lea: "The third Tuesday of January, at 10. Thank you for telling me, Peter."

Peter: "Thanks, Lea. Bye."

Lea: "Bye, Peter."

Notice how little Lea says. Her first turn is her name and company, and then she lets Peter speak. Next come the two facts she has, the proposal they went through six weeks ago and the three weeks he gave himself, and one open question about his side. Because she has said that a no is fine, he can tell her the truth. Lea says his answer back in a full sentence, so he knows she heard it, and asks for a date. There is no discount and no push for a decision, and Peter is the one who says goodbye.

Peter's answer counts as Later. The deal leaves this quarter's number and keeps its stage, and Lea notes in the CRM that the project is on hold until next year's budget, with her call booked for the third Tuesday of January at 10.

A buyer who says "The board decides on Thursday" has named a buyer step with a date, so the rep asks when to hear the result: "Then may I call you on Monday at 11 to hear what they decided?" That deal is recorded as Next step booked. A call that ends with "I'll send you some more information" books nothing, because sending information is a rep step.

When a buyer says "We went with another supplier", the rep thanks them, asks "May I ask what made the difference?" and records the reason. The deal is closed as lost the same day, with no second pitch and no discount.

Don't ask "Are you still interested?" Yes is the polite answer, so you learn nothing from it. And don't open with a new discount, which says nothing about where the project stands. No price would have brought Peter's budget forward.

The rep who owns the deal makes the call. If managers start calling buyers themselves, reps learn to keep their quiet deals out of the review.

What is left after the calls?

By the end of the week, the reps had made all 15 calls.

That leaves 14 real deals this quarter, the 9 moving deals plus the 5 with a next step booked, worth €600,000 (€400,000 plus €200,000). The €600,000 is one and a half times the €400,000 left to close, against three times in the CRM on Monday. Each of the 14 has a buyer step with a date behind it.

Peter's deal and the three other Later deals, €220,000 between them, leave this quarter, each with a call booked for a day and time in the month its buyer named. The 4 Said no deals, worth €230,000, were closed as lost that same week with their reasons, so they no longer take up the reps' time. The 2 Not reached deals, worth €150,000, stay out of this quarter's number until someone reaches the buyer. For how long to keep trying, see our post on when to call again, and when to stop.

Every Monday, put the CRM total and the value of the real deals side by side, and make a call list of every stale deal for that week. Moving a close date never takes a deal off that list, but an answer from the buyer does.

Where does DRING come in?

A deal like Peter's belongs with Lea, who knows him. DRING fits the deals your reps don't get to, such as quotes that went quiet, smaller deals nobody has called in weeks and last year's open deals. Reactivation is one of the outbound campaigns DRING runs, on a list you choose and inside your calling windows.

The agent asks what has changed since the last contact, checks whether the need is still there, updates the record either way and writes every result to your CRM. Live interest goes to a rep with the conversation attached, as our page for sales managers shows, and records that turn out to be closed stop taking up the reps' time. Which stage a deal belongs in, what goes into the forecast and what you offer stay with your team. Tell us about one list of quotes that went quiet, and DRING calls you in two minutes.