Pipeline Health
Five red flags. One honest look at your pipeline.
Not every deal that looks healthy is healthy. Here are the five signs that a deal in your pipeline is fiction — not because anyone is lying, but because nobody has checked.
1. No confirmed next meeting
If a rep can’t tell you the exact date and time of the next conversation with the prospect — on both calendars — the deal is stalled, whatever the CRM stage says. "Following up" is not a meeting. It’s a placeholder for one that may never happen.
2. The last contact was an email
Talking to a prospect and emailing a prospect are not the same activity, but they get logged the same way in most CRMs. If the last real conversation was more than two weeks ago, the deal’s temperature has probably dropped, even if the stage hasn’t moved.
3. The close date has moved more than once
One slip is normal — timelines shift. A close date that’s moved two or three times isn’t an accuracy problem. It’s the deal telling you something the rep either hasn’t noticed or hasn’t said out loud: this isn’t as close as it looks.
4. The manager only knows the status from the CRM
Ask a manager about their team’s top three deals. If the answer requires opening Salesforce first, the pipeline review isn’t producing real visibility — it’s producing a report. Managers who know the real story don’t need the dashboard to tell them.
5. The deal has gone quiet since the champion’s last promotion or exit
A champion who changed roles, got promoted, or left the company doesn’t automatically kill a deal — but it should trigger a fresh check. Deals with no re-confirmed champion after an org change are among the most commonly overstated in any pipeline.
What to do when you spot these
None of these signs mean a deal is dead. They mean it needs to move out of the "likely to close" column until it’s re-verified. That single discipline — moving unverified deals out of the forecast instead of leaving them in by default — is the difference between a pipeline that’s merely full and one that’s real.
Curious how many of your own deals would survive this check? Take the 60-second Pipeline Fiction Test — no email required — or run the full Sales Fiction Index™ across your entire pipeline in one week.