10-point deal health check. Forecast with conviction, not hope.
Have you met the person who controls the budget?
Is there a hard business event driving urgency?
Do you know all competitors and your differentiation?
Will your champion put their neck out for you?
Have you put a dollar value on the problem?
Do you know every step to get to signed paper?
Is budget allocated or are they still 'looking into it'?
Do you know exactly how they'll evaluate the winner?
Do both sides have committed next steps with dates?
Have you started the paper process early?
No economic buyer contact is the #1 reason deals stall. Get on a call with the person who holds the budget before next week.
A champion who won't advocate internally is just a coach. Test them: ask them to set up the exec meeting.
Self-imposed deadlines evaporate. Find the business event — board meeting, renewal, go-live date — or create one.
Unquantified pain is hobby budget. Work with your champion to build the business case — ROI in writing.
Unconfirmed budget = a project, not a deal. Get explicit confirmation that funds are allocated or being requested.
If you don't know who else is in the deal, assume you're losing. Ask your champion directly.
Map the full process: who approves, what's the legal cycle, what's the signature authority. Close the unknown unknowns.
If you don't define success, the buyer will — after the call. Document the eval criteria in a mutual action plan.
Open-ended next steps kill deals. Every interaction should end with a calendar invite owned by the buyer, not just you.
Legal reviews kill close dates. Introduce your legal team to theirs now — waiting until verbal close adds 4–8 weeks.
Most deal reviews are status updates disguised as coaching sessions. The rep recaps what happened, the manager listens, they agree on next steps, and nothing improves. A real deal review uses a structured scorecard to identify the specific gaps that will kill the deal — not what already happened, but what's missing. The difference between a deal review and a forecast call is the output: a forecast call produces a number; a deal review produces a coaching plan.
The 10-point framework covers: economic buyer access, real timeline with business consequences, competition mapped, champion strength, quantified pain, decision process clarity, budget confirmed, success criteria agreed, mutual action plan, and legal and procurement engaged. Weighting matters: economic buyer and champion are worth 15 points each because they determine whether anyone will push the deal forward internally. A deal without either is not a deal — it's a conversation. The review process itself matters: 30 minutes, rep scores the deal first without the manager's input, then the manager scores independently, and then they compare and discuss the gaps. Disagreements are where the coaching happens. The "requalify" threshold — below 50% — means the deal shouldn't be in forecast until specific gaps are closed. Each gap becomes an action item with a deadline and a method. That's the output that actually improves win rates.
A structured conversation between rep and manager to assess deal health, identify gaps in qualification or execution, and define specific actions to advance the deal. The best deal reviews use a consistent scorecard so that gaps are identified systematically, not based on whatever the rep chooses to mention.
Weekly for deals in commit or best-case. Monthly for upside pipeline. Every deal above 50% of quota value should get a formal review at least once before the close date.
A deal is forecastable when you have: confirmed economic buyer access, a real business timeline with consequences, an identified champion who is actively selling internally, confirmed budget, and a mutual action plan with agreed dates. Missing any of these increases close risk significantly.
MEDDIC is a qualification framework focused on whether a deal is real. A deal review scorecard is broader — it evaluates qualification AND execution AND process including mutual action plan, legal engagement, and competition. MEDDIC tells you if you should work the deal; a full scorecard tells you how to win it.
Discuss this in #deal-reviews with 194+ revenue operators in the community.