AC
Sales & RevOps5.1 KBMIT licensed

sales-deal-inspect

Rewritten from patterns in sales-skills/sales (MIT)

Inspect a single deal: health scorecard, MEDDPICC gap analysis, stakeholder map, risk patterns, and a prioritized action plan. Use when a deal feels stuck or at risk, the real decision-maker is unclear, the champion went quiet, or a deal review needs prep. Not for portfolio-level pipeline design or stage definitions: use revops. Not for CRM record quality: use sales-data-hygiene. Not for writing the outreach itself: use sales-cadence or cold-email.

  • sales
  • deal
  • inspect

SKILL.md

Deal Inspection

A deal is only as real as its evidence. Score what you can prove, mark the rest unknown, and turn every gap into one specific action with an owner and a date.

Workflow

  1. Gather the facts. Deal size, stage, time in stage, expected close date. Stakeholders: who is the champion, has the economic buyer been met, who else is evaluating. The rep's biggest worry (stalled, single-threaded, competitor, budget, ghosting champion, slipping dates, opaque process). Cross-check claims against actual correspondence and CRM activity where available, not memory.
  1. Score the health scorecard. Rate each Green, Yellow, or Red, with evidence: champion strength, economic buyer access, decision criteria, decision process, compelling event, competition, budget, paper process. No evidence means Unknown, not Red. Overall: 6+ Green is strong, 4-5 solid with gaps, 2-3 at risk, 0-1 question whether the deal is real.
  1. Run the MEDDPICC extraction. For each element (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Implicate the Pain, Champion, Competition): what is known, what is missing, priority to fill. Keep criteria and process separate: criteria is what they judge on, process is how the decision moves. Read references/inspection-tables.md for the full scorecard, MEDDPICC table, and risk-pattern checklist.
  1. Name the top 3 risks by likelihood times impact, each with a specific mitigation. Check the common patterns: single-threaded, no compelling event, ghost champion, happy ears (positive words, zero actions), procurement black hole, unconfirmed budget, moving goalposts (often a competitor steering criteria), no-decision risk, executive misalignment, zombie deal (2x+ average stage time).
  1. Build the action plan. Ranked table: action, owner, deadline, purpose. Every action names who, what, and by when. Categories to draw from: multi-threading (wider and higher), validation (test budget and process claims), acceleration (POC, reference call, exec alignment), de-risking, and commitment tests (ask for something that proves the deal is real: EB access, internal data, a fixed next date).
  1. Map the stakeholders. Name, title, role (champion, economic buyer, technical evaluator, end user, blocker, coach), engagement level, relationship strength, action needed. Minimum viable deal team: champion plus economic buyer. Champion without EB access is a red flag on its own.

Good vs Bad

Bad action item: "Build a relationship with the executive team and keep following up with the prospect."

Good action item: "Ask champion <CHAMPION> by Friday to intro you to the CFO for a 15-minute call on their cost-reduction goal, so budget is confirmed before their board meeting on <DATE>." Specific person, specific ask, deadline, and a reason tied to the deal clock.

Verification

Apply the commitment test before trusting any Green rating: has the prospect done something costly (intro'd the EB, shared internal docs, booked the next meeting with a date)? Expect at least one concrete action behind every Green. Words without actions: downgrade to Yellow and add a commitment-test action to the plan.

Check the plan itself: every action must answer who, what, when in one sentence. Read each aloud; if any is missing one of the three, rewrite it before delivering.

Footguns

  • Rating champion strength on vibes. Ask for evidence: intros made, docs shared, timeline intel given. None: mark Unknown and test it, do not guess Red.
  • Treating single-threaded as always fatal. Small deals with one decision-maker are normally single-threaded. Multi-threading guidance applies to complex multi-stakeholder deals.
  • Conflating decision criteria with decision process. They fail differently: wrong criteria loses the eval, unknown process loses the quarter. Keep separate rows.
  • Catastrophizing one missing MEDDPICC element. Not every deal needs all 8 filled. Prioritize by stage and size; early-stage deals legitimately have gaps.
  • Happy ears. Enthusiastic words score nothing. Only actions move ratings.

Completion checklist

  • [ ] Scorecard rated with evidence; unknowns marked Unknown, not guessed
  • [ ] MEDDPICC gaps listed with fill priority
  • [ ] Top 3 risks with likelihood, impact, and specific mitigation
  • [ ] Every action has owner, deadline, and purpose
  • [ ] Stakeholder map covers champion and economic buyer status
  • [ ] No stakeholder was contacted and no terms changed without user confirmation

Any box unchecked: not done. Fix or say so.

Reference files

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