How to Run a Sales Pipeline Review That Doesn't Waste Time

You know the drill. Every Friday at 2pm, the sales team gathers for "pipeline review." The manager pulls up the CRM, scrolls through opportunities, and asks each rep: "What's the status on this deal?"

The rep responds with some variation of: "It's going well. They're interested. We're waiting to hear back." The manager nods, makes a note, and moves to the next deal. Rinse and repeat for 90 minutes.

Nothing changes. No deals move forward. No one gets coaching. The forecast stays exactly as inaccurate as it was before the meeting. Everyone leaves feeling like they just wasted two hours of selling time.

“Our pipeline reviews were just reps reading their CRM notes out loud. We weren't managing deals—we were performing a weekly ritual that accomplished nothing.”

Effective pipeline reviews focus on three questions, in order:

1. Which deals are at risk and why? 2. What specific actions will move stalled deals forward? 3. What patterns are we seeing across multiple deals?

Notice what's missing: "Tell me about every deal in your pipeline." That's a waste of time. You should only discuss deals that need intervention.

Reps are optimistic by nature. They'll tell you a deal is "90% likely to close" right up until the prospect ghosts them. You need objective signals that a deal is dying.

Here are the five red flags that predict deal failure with scary accuracy:

“We started flagging deals where the proposal hadn't been opened in 5+ days. Turns out, 87% of those deals never closed. Now we address it immediately instead of waiting for the rep to admit the deal is dead.”

The worst pipeline reviews happen when managers show up unprepared and force reps to explain everything from scratch. The best reviews happen when managers do their homework first.

Before the meeting, pull a report showing: deals with no activity in 7+ days, deals exceeding normal stage duration, deals with proposals sent but low engagement, and deals closing this month with less than 3 stakeholders engaged.

Send this to your reps 24 hours before the meeting. Tell them: "We're going to focus on these deals. Come prepared with your plan to move them forward or your recommendation to disqualify them."

Here's the format I use for 30-minute pipeline reviews (yes, 30 minutes—not 90):

Part 1 (10 minutes): Review at-risk deals. For each deal, the rep answers: What's blocking progress? What's your plan to unblock it? Do you need help? If the rep doesn't have a clear plan, we either build one together or agree to disqualify the deal.

Part 2 (10 minutes): Review deals closing this month. Focus on: Are all stakeholders engaged? Has the economic buyer confirmed budget? What could derail this deal in the next two weeks?

Part 3 (10 minutes): Pattern discussion. What are we seeing across multiple deals? Are prospects stalling at the same stage? Are we losing to the same competitor? What can we learn?

The hardest part of pipeline reviews is getting reps to disqualify dead deals. Nobody wants to admit a deal is lost—it feels like failure.

But keeping dead deals in your pipeline destroys forecast accuracy and wastes time. If a deal has been stalled for 3+ weeks with no clear path forward, it's dead. Disqualify it.

Reframe disqualification as a positive: "You're freeing up time to work deals that will actually close." Track your disqualification rate. If it's below 10% per month, your reps are hoarding dead deals.

“We started celebrating disqualifications in our pipeline reviews. "Great job cutting that dead deal—now you can focus on the three deals that will actually close." It completely changed the culture.”