What should I ask in a pipeline review?

Most pipeline reviews I sit in on are a list of deal names, a stage, and a percentage someone made up on the spot. The salesperson reads it out, the owner nods, and nothing about the deal has actually moved by the time the meeting ends. That is not a review. It is a status update dressed up as management.

A real pipeline review changes what happens next — on a specific deal, this week. That means asking questions that produce an action, not just a number.

What stage is it actually at?

Not what stage it is logged at in the CRM — what has genuinely happened. A deal sitting in 'proposal sent' for seven weeks with no further contact is not a proposal-stage deal. It is a stalled deal wearing the wrong label. Ask the salesperson to describe the last real interaction, not the system status.

What commercial problem does this actually solve for them?

If the salesperson cannot answer this in one sentence, they do not have a deal — they have a contact who was polite in a meeting. Push for the business reason the prospect started the conversation: cost, capacity, risk, compliance, a customer they are about to lose. No stated problem, no real deal.

Who is the decision-maker, and have they said yes to anything?

There is a difference between a champion who likes the idea and the person who signs it off. Ask whether the salesperson has spoken to the actual budget holder, and what that person has personally agreed to so far — even something small. If the answer is 'I've mainly dealt with their ops manager', find out whether that person can actually buy.

What is the decision process, and where are you in it?

Some deals need one signature. Others need procurement sign-off, a board paper, or budget released in a new financial year. Ask what has to happen between now and a signed order, in order. If the salesperson does not know, that is the next question to answer before the deal moves further — not a detail to fill in later.

What is it worth, and does the customer agree?

Value on your side is not the same as value on theirs. Ask what the customer thinks this is worth to them, in their own terms — money saved, risk removed, time recovered. If the salesperson can only describe your product's features, the value conversation has not happened yet, and price objections later are predictable.

What is the timing, and whose timing is it?

A close date that the salesperson invented to satisfy the forecast is worthless. Ask what is driving the customer's timeline: a contract renewal, a budget cycle, a regulatory deadline, a capacity problem that is getting worse. If there is no external driver, the deal will move on your schedule, which usually means slowly.

Who else are they talking to?

'No competition' is rarely true — it usually means the salesperson has not asked. The realistic alternatives are a named competitor, doing nothing, or doing it in-house. Each needs a different message. If you do not know which one you are up against, you cannot help the salesperson counter it.

Why has this deal stalled, specifically?

For anything that has not moved in the last two to three weeks, this is the most useful question in the review. 'Following up' is not a reason — it is the absence of one. Find out whether it is a genuine blocker (budget, internal politics, a change of priority) or simply that nobody has picked up the phone. Those need completely different responses.

What is the next action, and when exactly?

Every deal you review should leave the meeting with one specific next step and a date — not 'chase them' but 'call the finance director Thursday morning about the revised numbers'. If a deal cannot produce a concrete next action, that is itself the finding: the salesperson does not actually know what would move it forward, and that is what the rest of the review should address.

Why should the prospect act now rather than later?

This is the question most reviews skip entirely, and it is the one that predicts whether a deal closes this quarter or drifts into the next one. If neither you nor the salesperson can articulate a reason for the customer to act now, the deal has no urgency attached to it, and 'maybe next quarter' is the honest forecast — whatever percentage is written down.

What does the forecast actually mean?

A percentage against a deal is only useful if everyone agrees what it represents. Some salespeople put 70% on anything they feel good about; others put 70% on anything with a signed proposal. Anchor the number to something observable: has the decision-maker verbally committed, is there a contract in legal review, has a purchase order number been requested. Forecast credibility comes from consistent definitions, not confidence.

What to do with the answers

The point of asking all this is not to interrogate the salesperson — it is to leave the meeting with a shorter list of clearer actions than you started with. A useful review ends with three things: deals that have a genuine next step and date, deals that need to be honestly reclassified as stalled or dead, and one or two patterns worth addressing across the whole pipeline — for example, too many deals with no confirmed decision-maker, or a habit of quoting before qualifying.

• Reclassify anything with no activity in three weeks and no scheduled next step — it is not 'in progress'.
• Push for a named decision-maker on any deal above a meaningful value before you invest more time in it.
• Ask for the customer's stated reason to act now on every deal forecast for this quarter.
• Note recurring gaps across deals — that pattern is your coaching agenda, not the individual deal review.

When a pipeline review is not enough

If every deal you review has the same missing information — no decision-maker identified, no stated reason to act, no real next step — that is not a coaching problem you fix in one meeting. It usually means the salesperson has never been taught to ask these questions in front of a customer, which is a training and management gap rather than a pipeline problem.

If you are not yet sure which of these problems you actually have, the Sales Help for Founders & Business Owners hub sets out the common patterns behind a weak pipeline, so you can work out whether the fix is a better review process, better coaching, or something further upstream.