You will be able to run a pipeline review that leaves each rep with clear next steps.
Monday morning, 9am. The team sits around a screen showing the CRM. The manager scrolls to the first deal and asks, "Where are we with this one?" The rep says it is looking good. The manager asks when it will close. The rep says end of the month, probably. Next deal. Ninety minutes later everyone leaves knowing roughly what they knew when they walked in, and two reps have quietly decided to update the CRM only on Sunday nights from now on, so there is less to be asked about.
Most pipeline reviews look like that. They feel like an inspection, they produce very little, and reps learn to manage the meeting instead of the deals. This lesson is about running one that leaves every rep with a clear next move on each deal they bring.
"How do you feel about this deal?" invites a feeling, and reps are optimists by trade. A deal that "feels good" can still be missing a decision maker, a budget and a date.
Start every deal discussion from the written process you built in module 4. What stage is the deal in, and are both exit criteria for the previous stage actually met? If a deal sits at proposal seen, has the buyer discussed the proposal with the rep? Is the decision date agreed? Those are yes or no questions, and the answers are in the CRM or they are not.
This changes the tone of the meeting. You are no longer judging the rep's confidence. You are both looking at the deal against a standard the team agreed. When the answer is no, the conversation moves naturally to what would make it yes.
The single most useful question in a pipeline review is "What has the buyer done since last week?" Most reps will answer a different question at first: what they did. They sent the proposal, followed up twice, left a voicemail. That is activity on one side of the deal.
A deal only moves when the buyer acts. They reply, attend a meeting, introduce a colleague, share a document, give feedback on the price. If the buyer has done nothing for two weeks, the deal has not moved, however busy the rep has been. Lesson 5.3, Spotting deals that will slip, makes this one of the warning signs.
When Wei Ming started asking this question, Raj struggled with it for the first two weeks. On one deal, he had sent three follow-up emails and the buyer had not replied to any of them. Raj described the deal as "active". Asked what the buyer had done, he paused and said, "Nothing, actually." That pause was the most useful moment of the meeting, because it led to a plan to reach the buyer another way, through the HR manager Raj had met at the first meeting.
Every deal discussion should end with an agreed next action, an owner, and a date. "Follow up" is not an action. "Call the HR manager on Wednesday to ask whether the finance director has seen the proposal" is.
Write these down during the meeting, in the CRM or a shared note, so you can open next week's review by checking them. Over a few weeks this becomes the rhythm of the meeting: last week's actions, what the buyer did in response, this week's actions.
Keep it short per deal. If a deal needs more than five minutes, it needs its own conversation. Note it, book a separate slot with the rep, and move on. A review that spends half an hour on one deal leaves the others with no time at all.
There are two different jobs in a pipeline review, and mixing them makes both worse.
One job is the forecast: which deals will close this period, and for how much? Those questions need short, factual answers. Is it a commit or not? Has the close date moved? Lesson 5.2 covers the categories.
The other job is coaching: how can this rep move this deal? Those questions are open and take longer. What do you think is stopping the buyer? Who else could you talk to? What did they say when you asked about the budget?
When the two are mixed, reps learn that admitting a deal is stuck lowers their forecast in front of the team, so they stop admitting it. Separate the two parts of the meeting. Wei Ming runs his review in two halves. The first twenty minutes cover forecast deals only, quickly, with the four questions he asks about every deal. The remaining time is for coaching, where reps bring one or two deals they want help with and the team suggests next steps.
The four questions he asks about each deal in the first half are: what stage is it in, and are the exit criteria met? What has the buyer done since last week? What is the next action, who owns it and by when? Is it a commit, best case or pipeline deal, and has the close date moved? Notice that these come straight from the process you built in module 4 and the forecast categories coming in lesson 5.2.
In the activity below you will write your own pipeline review agenda, including the four questions you will ask about every deal. Write them so a rep could prepare their answers before the meeting starts.
Write a pipeline review agenda with the four questions you will ask about every deal.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).