Your Pipeline Is Lying to You. Here’s How to Find the Truth.

Before "revenue intelligence" became a product category, I hired two consultants to analyze my pipeline. They were building a data analysis company and offered to use our data as a real-world test. For two weeks, they crunched the numbers without speaking to a single person on my team.

Their conclusion was brutal: 50% of our pipeline was dead on arrival and would never close.

It was the last thing any sales leader wants to hear, but it was better to know the truth. They didn’t just deliver bad news; they told us precisely which deals would fail and why. It came down to two simple, data-backed truths:

1. Momentum is everything. Any deal that went dark for more than 30 days never closed. It didn’t matter if the customer re-engaged on day 31 and kept us busy for three more months. The data was undefeated. A stall was a death sentence.

2. We had the wrong champions. We were chasing VPs, but our wins came from Directors. This was counter-intuitive; everyone wants the most senior sponsor. But our solution was a new platform for a new buyer with no dedicated budget. It required work to get a deal done. Directors felt the pain and were motivated to do that work; VPs were not.

These weren’t opinions; they were facts based on our own data. We were relying on pipeline metrics that were fooling us.  We measured things that were easy to track but missed the non-trackable factors that actually drove wins. 

It’s Time for a Mid-Year Reality Check

As we close out Q2, now is the time for a deep, truthful analysis of your pipeline. Do you really have what you need to make your year? Go beyond the standard MEDDICC questions  and focus on what actually drives deals forward:

• Champions vs. Coaches: Do you have the right people fighting for you? A true champion has influence and is personally invested in your success.  If they won’t collaborate on a Mutual Action Plan or rally internal resources, they are not a champion. 

• Urgency & Momentum: Is there a real, quantifiable cost to the customer for every month of delay?  If there is no urgency, the deal will stall. And as the data shows, a stalled deal is a lost deal.

• Budget Certainty: Given the unpredictable economy, a budget you confirmed last quarter may no longer exist.  The customer’s ROI hurdle rate may have changed.  You must continually confirm and reconfirm the budget. 

You can't afford to be surprised.  The hard truth is you may be making assumptions about buyer behavior that are no longer valid.  Do the hard assessment now, and take action. Your year depends on it.