Loading
The pipeline is a list rather than a forecast. Start with entry criteria — almost every other item on this list depends on them.
Weighted because the items are not equal. Entry criteria and past close dates carry three and three; everything else is downstream of those two.
It asks six questions about your open pipeline and tells you which of them your data can actually answer. The ones it cannot are where your forecast is guessing.
It is a diagnostic, not a score. The output is a list of specific weaknesses rather than a number out of ten.
Answer from your current pipeline, not from how it is meant to work. What proportion of open deals have a close date in the past? How many have not been touched in three weeks? How many sit in a stage nobody can define?
Answer honestly — the value is entirely in the gap between the intended process and the actual one.
It will not tell you whether a specific deal is real. That is the rep's judgement and it is usually better than any rule.
It also cannot see deals that are not in the system at all, which on many teams is the largest problem of the lot.
Stale deals and past close dates are the two that matter most. A pipeline where a fifth of deals have a close date in the past is not a forecast, whatever weighting is applied to it.
Stage definition problems show up as deals moving backwards, or as two stages with nearly identical conversion rates — which means they are one stage.
No, and there is no email gate.
No. It is a set of questions you answer about your own numbers.
Under about a tenth untouched in three weeks, in most teams.
Half an hour on your own figures, and an honest answer about the parts Treepie does not improve.