Deal Inspection

Deal inspection is what a sales leader does to a deal, as opposed to what a seller says about it. You take one opportunity and you go through it letter by letter. Who is the Economic Buyer and when did we last speak to them? What are the Metrics, in the customer’s words? Who is the Champion and what have they done for us? Where is the Paper Process and who owns it? For every answer, one follow-up: how do we know? The point is to separate what has been proven by the customer from what has been assumed by the seller.

The question it answers: is this deal as strong as it looks, and what do we do about the parts that are not?

The mistake is confusing inspection with interrogation. An inspection where the seller leaves feeling attacked teaches them to hide things, and a leader who only hears good news is forecasting blind. The other mistake is inspecting outcomes. “Why did we lose?” is a lagging question. “Why did we have no Champion in week six and still forecast it?” is a leading one, and it is the only one you can coach.

How I use it. I judge the decisions in the deal, not the result. A rep who qualified out of a bad deal made a good decision, even if a competitor later closed it. A rep who won without ever meeting the Economic Buyer got lucky, and luck is not a skill I can scale. Inspection done well is a conversation about the next action, every week, on the deals that matter. The book calls it the deal inspection rhythm. The forecast you can stand behind comes out of it.