3 Health Tests for Your Opportunity

How healthy is your pipeline—really? In this short video, I walk you through three simple tests to diagnose whether a deal is strong, stalled, or slipping away.

Don't forget to check out last week's top tip: Pressure On? Set the Example!!

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If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

I was chatting with my coach this morning, Alan Weiss, and I was walking him through some of the work that I do, dissecting deals and helping my clients make sure that they've got all their “i”s dotted and their “t”s crossed. And I laughed and said, I'm the deal doctor. And he said hey, what you're doing is you're conducting a mid mortem and it's not a pre-mortem looking at the opportunity that already exists and figuring out what might go wrong. And we agreed that it's important to have a litmus test.

And when I think about it in terms of opportunities, there's three simple litmus tests. Three simple questions that you could be asking yourself on every single deal to make sure that you are moving forward and that you have don't have any red flags.

The first one is, are you talking to at least four stakeholders? I don't care if they're wide or deep in the organization, but other at least four people actively engaged. I don't mean you've got four email addresses or four phone numbers, but are there four people actively engaged in this opportunity giving you feedback, helping you move forward, seeing your information?

Number two, has value been quantified across the organization? In other words, does your stakeholder and the three people you're talking to see how this benefits everyone in the organization, not just their little scope of work. And do they see how it brings value to multiple people. And do they see you as organizationally relevant?

And number three, has that value been quantified? Has it been dollar-ized? Are they able to articulate and say this will save us half a million dollars, or this will bring us half a million dollars. If it's time or security or service they're looking for, have they been able to say the other person provided us such poor service it cost us going to bring that back. If they can't quantify the cost of doing business with you, then the deal has less likelihood of moving forward than if they can.

So run it through those questions. Do you have at least four stakeholders? And to be fair, you might need more. But do you have at least four? Has value been operationalized and has value been dollar-ized? Those three questions will help you understand if you're in a position to win, or you might be in a position to lose.