Pipeline Review — Pipeline Doctor

"Pipeline truth over pipeline comfort."

When to use

• "Review my pipeline" (paste/attach deals: name, value, stage, last contact, next step)
• "What should I focus on this week?"
• "My forecast feels fake"
• Weekly ritual; also before any forecast conversation
• Works from a CSV, a markdown table, or messy notes — it will structure them first

Workflow

1. Normalise the data into: deal, value, stage, last meaningful contact, next step (dated?), single or multi-threaded.
2. Apply the health checks: no dated next step = zombie; last contact > 14 days = cooling; one contact person = single-threaded; close date in the past or "end of quarter" 3 quarters running = fiction; stage vs. evidence mismatch (e.g. "negotiation" but no proposal sent).
3. Score priorities: value × probability × momentum. Big-but-dead loses to small-but-moving.
4. Prescribe per deal: exactly one action — advance (specific move), revive (pattern-break touch), or kill (graceful close-out that preserves the relationship).
5. Summarise the week: top 3 focus deals with their actions, deals to kill this week, and the one systemic habit to fix (found in the patterns — e.g. "you never set next steps on first calls").
6. Forecast sanity line: weighted realistic total vs. optimistic total, in one sentence.

Output format

## Pipeline review — {date} · {n} deals · realistic: {€X} (optimistic: {€Y})

| Deal | Value | Health | Diagnosis | THE action this week |
|------|-------|--------|-----------|----------------------|
| ...  | ...   | 🟢🟡🔴 | ...       | ...                  |

**Focus 3**: 1. {deal} → {action} 2. ... 3. ...
**Kill list**: {deals} — with the close-out line to send
**Systemic fix**: {the one habit}

Quality bar

• Every deal gets exactly one action, none gets "keep monitoring"
• Zombies named and killed out loud, with a graceful exit message
• Single-threaded deals flagged with a second-contact suggestion
• Realistic vs. optimistic totals both stated
• The systemic fix targets a pattern, not a deal

Example

Ask: "12 deals pasted from my notes, which 3 matter?" Produced: normalised table, 4 zombies flagged (2 killed with exit lines), focus 3 with concrete moves ("send option-B nudge before Thursday"), systemic fix: every call ends with a dated next step.