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This is a private tool for one purpose: working out whether a deal in your pipeline is real — and if it isn't, figuring out what to do about it.

Most pipelines carry deals that were never going to close. Not because the seller was careless, but because the pressure to show a full forecast makes it easier to add a deal than to explain why you're not. Over time those deals quietly eat your attention, distort your forecast, and make it harder to have honest conversations with your manager about what's actually moving.

This audit runs three checks against one deal at a time. Nobody's reading this but you — so be honest. Fill it in, then use the Reset section at the bottom to decide what you actually want to do next.


Deal / Opportunity name: (rename this page to the deal name)

Account: Date completed:

Estimated deal value (as currently logged):


Why Deals Really Die

Research into large B2B buying decisions consistently finds that deals fail for three reasons — and none of them are price.

  1. They didn't understand us. Sellers pitched generic solutions instead of adapting to the buyer's actual situation. Buyers felt unheard.
  2. We didn't trust them to deliver. The deciding factor wasn't capability on paper — it was confidence in execution. Could this partner actually make it work in their world, with their people?
  3. We couldn't justify the cost. Not price too high. An inability to connect price to value. The economic case lived only in the seller's head — and the buyer couldn't defend it internally.

Every one of those rejected deals was in someone's forecast. The uncomfortable part: most of the time, the seller already knew.

The three checks below are designed to surface exactly that.


Check 1: Do I really understand what the customer is trying to fix?


Check 2: Am I talking to someone who can actually make the call?