Hi

When did you last look at your pipeline and actually believe everything what you were reading?

Most sellers I know pause at that question.

On paper, the deals are all there. Moving along. Every update sounds the same — still progressing, waiting on procurement, decision maybe next quarter.

But you know some of those deals are duds, always were, always will be.

And there's a price to pay for that, but it isn't showing up in your CRM.

There's a version of this you already know.

A deal sits in your pipeline for months. Nothing moves. Every update sounds the same — still progressing, waiting on procurement, decision maybe next quarter.

But that's not the part that costs you.

The part that costs you is what happens in the meantime.

You think about the deal between calls. You prepare updates for management. You send another message to the client, even though nothing has changed, because you need something to report.

And while all that's happening, the deals that could actually close are getting half your attention. That's not just lost time. Those are deals that could have closed, didn't, and you'll never quite know how much they were worth.

Looking back, the deals I regret most aren't the ones I lost.

They're the ones I never worked properly because I was somewhere else.

Here's the part nobody says out loud in pipeline reviews.

Most of us have added a deal we knew wasn't real.

Not because we were sloppy. Because the pressure to have a full pipeline is structural — it doesn't come from one bad manager, it comes from how the whole system is built.

Managers need pipeline. Their bosses need forecasts. Forecasts need deals. So the pressure flows down, and the incentives are quietly built against honesty.

When your boss wants more coverage, you find more coverage. When leadership likes the sound of a logo, the deal becomes strategic. When a new product launches, deals appear for it — whether the market is ready or not.

You know the deal is shaky. You add it anyway. In pipeline language, it's simply called early stage.

And once you're in the room, logic rarely beats the moment. You mention a well-known company on a team call and the room wakes up. Someone asks how big it could be. You try to explain the reality — yes, the company is huge, but this project isn't, realistically maybe $100k — and none of that lands, because a brand name is already doing something to people's imagination that revenue figures can't undo.

Same with new products. You spend your days talking to customers. You know what they actually care about. Sometimes the offer just misses — wrong features, wrong price, solving a problem the customer doesn't think they have. Still, the meetings happen. The proposal gets written. Another deal quietly enters the pipeline.

Nobody forced you. The system just made it easier to add the deal than to explain why you weren't.

Here's the thing I keep coming back to.

Most of the time, everyone in the room already knows which deals are real.

The boss needs a full pipeline. You need to fill it. So you do. Managers need coverage. Their bosses need forecasts. Forecasts need deals. Everyone nods. The forecast goes up. The room agrees: this quarter, we're closing these.

They don't.

Curtain falls. Same show next week.

And once you see it that way, you can't unsee it. The pipeline review isn't really about what's going to close. It's about everyone playing their part until the meeting ends.

That's not a personal failing. It's a system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The question is whether you want to keep performing in it, or whether you'd rather know which deals are actually worth your time.

A few years ago I started using a simple test before I put serious time into any deal. Three questions. That's it.

When all three line up, deals move. Not always fast, but they move.

When they don't, the deal might still be sitting in the CRM — updated every fortnight, perfectly formatted — but deep down you already know it’s a flop.

If you want to run this across your pipeline now, I've turned these three checks into a short worksheet at the bottom of this edition. Takes about ten minutes.

I'm not suggesting you go and kill half your pipeline this afternoon.

Some of those deals are real and just slow. Some are blocked by things outside your control: procurement timelines, budget cycles, internal politics you can't see from the outside. Killing a deal isn't always the right move, and neither is judging yourself for the ones that didn't pan out.

But there's a difference between a deal that's slow and a deal that never had a path to a decision.

One of them deserves your attention. The other is quietly taking it.

Run a quick check across your pipeline this week. Not a full CRM cleanup — just an honest look at what's actually moving and what's there for other reasons.

The Pipeline Alignment Audit walks through the same three checks and sorts your deals into:

[Grab the Pipeline Audit Checklist here →]

Run it once and you'll probably spot two or three deals you already suspected weren't going anywhere.

Know someone carrying a pipeline full of ghosts? Forward this — the checklist works just as well for a team as it does solo.

One last thing before you go.

If you opened this edition and immediately thought of a deal — or two, or three — sitting in your pipeline that probably shouldn't be there, then good. You're being honest with yourself.

This isn't something that disappears overnight. But noticing it and doing something about it is where it starts.

The pipeline audit won't tell you how to close more deals. It'll just show you which ones are worth closing in the first place. And that alone usually changes how you spend your week.

Run it this week while the deals are fresh in your mind.

Until then, stay Account Minded.

This week's podcast episode: Your Pipeline is Mostly Fiction (And You Know It) Why deals that were never real end up in your forecast, what it's actually costing you, and how to start calling it what it is.

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