deal-review

name	Deal Review
description	Test a deal against what has actually been proved, and advance it or downgrade it honestly.
category	Sales

Deal Review

A stage is a claim about what has been proved, not about how the last call felt. This pass tests the claim.

When to use

• A deal is about to be forecast.
• A close date has moved once. Do not wait for twice.
• A deal has been in one stage longer than the stage usually takes.

Steps

1. Name the economic buyer. Not the champion. If nobody can name them, the deal is in discovery whatever the row says — this is the single commonest late-stage stall.
2. Check what the champion actually has. Budget, authority to convene, and a problem urgent enough to survive their quarter. A champion with none of the three is a friendly contact.
3. Test the close date. What has to happen between now and then, and who does each thing? A date with no sequence behind it is a guess with a calendar entry.
4. Write what would kill it honestly. If the answer is "nothing", the deal has not been qualified.
5. Check accounts.how_they_buy. Security review and procurement are what make enterprise deals close in quarters; a date that ignores them is wrong by a quarter.
6. Advance or downgrade the row. Downgrading is the point of this pass, and no_decision is a legitimate forecast outcome.

Output

The deals row updated with the buyer, the tested date, and what would kill it — or moved back a stage with the reason. A deal that survives this pass is forecastable; one that does not was not, whatever it looked like yesterday.