Keep deal stages honest

Pipeline stages drift for an understandable reason. Moving a deal backwards feels like an admission, so it does not happen, and a board full of late-stage deals is mostly a record of optimism.

Nobody is lying. The stage was true once.

Define each stage by evidence, not by feeling

The only durable fix. A stage should be something you can point at, not something a rep believes.

"Proposal sent" means a proposal was sent, and the document exists. "Negotiation" means they have responded to pricing. "Verbal" means a specific person said a specific thing, and the activity log has it.

Write those definitions down. Most of this playbook is that exercise.

Have it check the evidence, not the sentiment

Every Wednesday, review our open deals against our stage definitions.

For each deal where the logged activity does not support its stage, tell
me:
  the deal and its current stage
  what evidence the stage requires
  what the activity actually shows
  what stage the evidence supports

Do not change any stage. Show me the list.

Only flag a deal where the evidence contradicts the stage, not where it is
merely thin. A quiet week is not a demotion.

Not changing anything is deliberate, and worth keeping longer than feels necessary. A stage is a forecast input, and an employee that quietly demotes deals will change your number without anyone deciding to. The valuable output here is the conversation the list starts, not the tidying.

Expect the first list to be uncomfortable

It usually is, and the discomfort is the point. It is also worth separating two different findings that will both appear: deals genuinely mis-staged, and deals correctly staged whose evidence was never logged.

The second is much more common. It is a record-keeping problem wearing a forecasting problem's clothes, and fixing it makes everything else here work better.

Let it move stages only in one direction

If you eventually want it writing, let it move deals forward on clear evidence — a signed document, a countersigned contract — and never backwards. Advancement on evidence is safe. Demotion is a judgement about a person's work and should stay with a person.

What good looks like

The board reflects what has actually happened, and your forecast stops being an argument about who is optimistic.

The measure is whether the weekly list gets shorter. If the same deals appear week after week, nobody is acting on it, and the report has become a ritual.