Pipeline risks for manager review

Run this review before the weekly pipeline meeting. It gives you a ranked list of active opportunities that need intervention, plus a named manager action for each one. Use it when your team has enough open deals that anecdotal updates no longer show where the quarter is at risk.

1. Set the review boundary

Start with one export or report containing active opportunities only. Decide the exact population before anyone starts discussing individual deals.

Include opportunities that are:

• Open in the CRM at the review cut-off time
• Expected to close within your agreed forecast horizon
• Above the deal-value threshold you use for manager review
• Owned by the sales team being reviewed

Exclude closed-won, closed-lost, test records and duplicates. State the cut-off date at the top of the review document, for example: CRM data checked at 09:00 Monday.

Create a working table with these fields:

Field	What to record
Opportunity	Account name and opportunity name
Owner	The salesperson responsible
Stage	Current CRM stage
Amount	Current opportunity value
Close date	CRM close date
Next step	The next customer-facing action and date
Stakeholders	Named contact, role and latest activity
Stage evidence	Evidence that supports the current stage
Risk	Specific reason the deal may slip or be lost
Manager action	One action, owner and due date

2. Gather the evidence before the meeting

Ask each opportunity owner to update the record before the review. Do not use the meeting to reconstruct basic facts from memory.

For every deal, require:

1. The last meaningful customer interaction, including date, contact and outcome.
2. The next agreed customer action, including date and owner.
3. The named business problem or buying objective.
4. The decision process, if known: decision maker, evaluators, approval route and target decision date.
5. The close plan: milestones between now and signature, with dates.
6. Evidence for the present stage, such as a completed discovery, confirmed evaluation criteria, a scheduled commercial review or a stated procurement step.

Use the CRM record, call notes, email summaries and meeting invitations as the source material. Keep links or record references beside the claim where possible. A note saying good meeting, positive response is not usable evidence. Replace it with what the customer agreed, what remains open and when it will be resolved.

If you use an xAI tool to organise account notes or draft a risk summary, give it the source notes and ask it to label missing information rather than infer it. Product behaviour can vary, so check the relevant setup and data-handling guidance in the xAI documentation overview.

3. Test the stage against the record

Read each opportunity from the earliest incomplete requirement, not from its CRM stage label. Your aim is to find deals where the stage is ahead of the evidence.

Apply these tests in order:

1. Customer problem: Is there a specific, recorded problem with business impact or a clear buying objective?
2. Stakeholder activity: Has the owner spoken recently with a relevant contact? Is the decision maker identified and engaged where the stage requires it?
3. Decision path: Does the team know who decides, what they need to approve and when they expect to decide?
4. Commercial path: Are budget, procurement, security, legal or other approval steps known where relevant?
5. Mutual next step: Is there a dated action accepted by both sides, not merely an internal task?
6. Close plan: Do the milestones make the stated close date plausible?

Mark the first failed test as the primary evidence gap. Do not list six vague concerns. One clear gap gives the owner something to fix.

For example, a deal marked late-stage with a proposal sent last week may still be at risk if no customer meeting is booked to review it, the economic buyer is unnamed and procurement timing is unknown. The proposal is activity. It is not proof of a path to close.

4. Check the close date and stakeholder motion

Review the close date separately from the stage. A correctly staged deal can still have an unrealistic date.

Work backwards from the proposed signature date. Allow time for each recorded milestone: customer review, selection, commercial discussion, approvals, procurement and signature. If a required milestone has no date, treat the close date as unproven.

Then inspect stakeholder motion:

• No meaningful customer interaction in the review period: check whether the deal is stalled.
• Activity only with a single user: check access to the decision process.
• Champion is active but has not confirmed internal support: check for a single-threaded deal.
• Decision maker is named but has not engaged: record this as unverified access, not coverage.
• Procurement or approval is mentioned without an owner and date: record an execution risk.

Do not penalise a deal simply because the cycle is long. Flag it when the next customer event, decision route or close-plan milestone is absent, overdue or unsupported.

5. Rank the risks and assign manager actions

Give each opportunity one priority: Critical, High, Watch or Healthy. Use the same criteria every week so the list is comparable.

If you see	Priority	Manager action
Close date is near and a required decision, approval or stakeholder is unconfirmed	Critical	Join the next customer meeting or agree a recovery plan with the owner within two working days
Stage evidence is missing, next step is overdue, or the deal depends on one contact	High	Inspect call plan and require a dated action to close the evidence gap
Close plan has future milestones but one is weak or unowned	Watch	Review progress at the next pipeline meeting
Evidence, stakeholder activity and dated milestones support the plan	Healthy	No manager intervention beyond normal inspection

Write manager actions as observable tasks. Help progress deal is not an action. Review commercial call plan with Priya before Thursday; manager attends pricing review if buyer confirms is an action.

Order the final risk list by priority, then by close-date urgency, then by opportunity value. Keep the list short enough to manage. If almost every deal is critical, your criteria or CRM hygiene needs attention.

6. Publish the handover

Send the reviewed table after the meeting. Include only three sections:

• Priority risks: opportunity, primary gap, priority and likely impact on timing.
• Owner commitments: the next customer action and due date.
• Manager commitments: intervention, named manager and due date.

Update the CRM with corrected close dates, next steps and stage changes. Keep the review document as the meeting record, but do not let it become a second pipeline system.

Check whether the output is wrong

The output is unreliable when it makes a strong claim without a source note, when a deal is called healthy despite no dated next customer step, or when the risk reason is generic enough to apply to any opportunity. Watch for duplicated account names, stale CRM dates and activity that is internal only but presented as customer progress.

Sample several Healthy deals as well as the critical ones. Ask the owner to show the latest customer evidence and the next agreed milestone. If they cannot do so quickly, downgrade the deal or mark the evidence gap. This check prevents the review from concentrating only on obvious problem deals while optimistic records remain untested.

When the review does not work

If owners arrive without updated records, stop debating forecasts and set a short deadline to complete the required fields. Review the incomplete records first next time. If the team disputes stage definitions, publish a one-page stage-evidence checklist and use it for two review cycles before changing the CRM process. If the risk list is still too long, raise the value threshold or split the meeting by segment, but keep the same evidence tests and action format.