Deal Review 2.0

Hi Everyone,

Ebsta's 2023 benchmark analyzed more than 3 million B2B opportunities and found that only 15% of deals were fully qualified at companies using a formal sales qualification framework. The fully qualified deals won at 311% higher rates than the rest.

The hour you spend on deal review every week is where reps learn to close that gap.

Today, we're walking through what changes when you run that hour as a working session instead of a pipeline recap.

The default deal review format

The typical weekly deal review opens with reps reading their pipeline out loud, covering things like close dates or deal size. The manager asks questions about the forecast, and the team leaves with updated numbers and a slightly tidier CRM.

Clari's published guidance on pipeline reviews recommends spending around 90% of the time on coaching the risks and the next step, and only 10% on reporting the number.

The recap version of the meeting inverts that ratio. Reps update the manager on what they already know. Nobody gets pressure-tested on the assumptions underneath the forecast.

The pre-read does the recap for you

Insight Partners publishes a deal review template that their portfolio companies use. The single most important element is the pre-read. Reps fill out a one-page summary on each deal 24 hours before the meeting and send it to the manager and the team. The live conversation skips the recap because everyone has read the summary.

The pre-read covers four areas:

1. The economic impact for the buyer, including the cost of doing nothing.
2. The people involved, with named economic buyers and tested champions.
3. The decision process, with dates and procurement steps.
4. The competition, including the option of doing nothing.

When the manager reads the pre-read ahead of time, the live hour goes straight to the gaps, and the conversation works through the deal instead of reviewing it.

What this format produced at Mintel

Mintel, a research firm with around 6,000 clients, runs their pipeline reviews using call data and deal boards. They noticed their teams weren't reaching enough buyers per deal and set a four-contact threshold for serious opportunities. They built coaching around the deals that fell short.

Their win rate increased 34% after the change. The four-contact rule was the surface insight. The structural change was running the review as a working session that surfaces those insights in the first place.

Try this in your next deal review

Before you change anything, test the format on one deal. Pick the deal you're least certain about and ask the rep to fill out the four sections of the pre-read by tomorrow.

Sit with them and walk through what they wrote. The places where the rep can't give a clean answer are the gaps you'd work through in the meeting.

Once that works, send the template to the rest of the team and run the full version next week.

Go deeper

👉 Ebsta: 2023 B2B Sales Benchmark Report – the dataset behind the 15% qualification rate and the 311% win-rate gap

👉 Insight Partners: Running Effective Deal Reviews – the pre-read model and a downloadable template you can adapt

👉 Gong: How Mintel Increased Win Rates by 34% – the case study, including how the four-contact rule emerged from their review structure

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we'll look at how to catch Ideal Client Profile drift before it hits your retention numbers.

That's it for today.

P.S. We're working on the next few issues. What's a topic you keep meaning to think through but haven't yet? Let us know, and we'll add it to the list.