SEVEN PAGES
TWO WORKSHEETS
Rebuild your pipeline around what the buyer did, not what the seller felt.
01
THE
PROBLEM
Ask a rep why a deal sits in stage three and you will usually get a sentence about the buyer's enthusiasm. The call went well. They love it. Procurement is a formality.
None of that is evidence. It is a seller's reading of a buyer's politeness, and it is the most common reason a forecast misses by thirty percent with no warning at all.
The fix is not better judgement. It is refusing to let judgement into the field. A stage should advance when the buyer does something that costs them something. Everything else is a note, not a stage.
02
Could a stranger reading your CRM verify this without talking to the rep? If yes it is evidence. If no it is a feeling with a timestamp.
THE TRAP
Most pipelines are full of rung one and reported as rung four. The gap between those two is the entire forecast miss.
03
03
Fill this in with your sales leader. The argument is the value.
| STAGE | EXIT CRITERION | ARTIFACT REQUIRED | RUNG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualified | Buyer booked a second meeting before the first ended | Accepted calendar invite | 01 |
| Multi‑threaded | A second stakeholder joined, invited by your contact | Forwarded invite, attendees named | 02 |
| Validating | Buyer completed work on their side to evaluate you | Their data file, or a completed questionnaire | 03 |
| Championed | Your case was presented internally, or you met the signer | The deck they used, or an exec on an invite they sent | 04 |
| Committed | Paper is moving through their process, not yours | Redlines received, or a PO number issued | 05 |
Five stages is usually right. If you have eight, two of them are the same stage with different moods, and one exists because somebody wanted a dashboard.
04
NOW YOURS
Write your own five on the next page. Any stage you cannot attach an artifact to is a stage you cannot forecast from.
04
If a row takes over a minute, that stage is not defined yet.
| # | STAGE NAME | EXIT CRITERION, BUYER ACTION | ARTIFACT ON FILE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | |||
| 02 | |||
| 03 | |||
| 04 | |||
| 05 |
THE ONE TEST TO APPLY TO EVERY ROW
Could a stranger reading your CRM verify this without talking to the rep?
05
WHAT IT COSTS
An afternoon with the right two people in the room. That is the whole exercise.
05
Predictable enough that you can watch for them from week one.
FAILURE 01
The artifact becomes admin
If logging evidence takes more than fifteen seconds, reps stop, and you are back to feelings inside a month. Attach it to something they already do rather than adding a field.
FAILURE 02
Managers override the rung
The first time a leader moves a deal up on a good feeling, the system becomes decorative. If you want an exception, log it as an exception and count them.
FAILURE 03
Pipeline appears to collapse
Week one of honest scoring always looks like a disaster. It is not. You are seeing the real number for the first time. Tell your board before you run it, not after.
FAILURE 04
Evidence turns into a gate
The ladder describes reality, it does not create it. A rep chasing an artifact to advance a stage is doing paperwork. The artifact is the symptom of progress, never the cause.
06
THE ONE THAT MATTERS
Failure two kills more rewrites than the other three combined, and it is always a leader who does it.
06
WHAT TO
DO NOW
01
Open your ten largest open deals and write down, for each, the highest rung you can actually prove. Not what the stage says. What you can prove.
02
Fill in worksheet two with your sales leader. One afternoon. Argue about it properly.
03
Tell whoever reads your forecast that the number is about to look worse and why. Do this before you change anything.
04
Rescore the whole pipeline against the new definitions in one sitting. A partial migration is worse than none.
NO. 01
OF 06
If you run this yourself and your forecast gets more honest, that was the point. Nothing here is held back for a paid version.
JOSH DEMPSEY · STAGEONEGTM.COM · JOSH@STAGEONEGTM.COM