you trust 12 of your 47 open deals (be honest)

You have 47 deals in your pipeline. If you're honest, you'd bet money on maybe 12 of them.

The other 35 aren't deals (anymore). But you haven’t had that conversation with yourself yet.

A pipeline you don't trust doesn't only mess up your forecast. It lets you feel like you're fine when you're not, and buries the 12 real deals ones under 35 dead ones so you can't see where to spend your time.

A smaller pipeline you trust beats a bigger looking one you're lying to yourself about, every time.

If you’re ready to go on this journey…here's how to clear the graveyard. (You're going to feel worse for about an hour, then much better.)

Go through every open opp and run it against these five questions. Any deal that fails gets closed-lost with a reason.

1. Is there a next step on the calendar, with a date? Not "I'll follow up next week." A specific meeting, scheduled, that both sides agreed to. No mutually agreed next step is the single most reliable sign a deal is already gone.
   
2. Has it moved recently, relative to your sales cycle? If your cycle is 90 days, every real deal should move through in roughly 90 days, whether it closes or dies. A deal that hasn't moved in 30 days is stalling toward dead.
   
3. Do you know more than one person at the company? If your whole deal lives in one person's inbox, you might not have a deal. One champion goes quiet and the whole thing disappears. (And the person who can say yes is rarely the one person you've been talking to.)
   
4. Can the buyer name a reason to buy now? "Still discussing internally" with no timeline and no trigger is not a reason. Real deals have a why-now: a compelling event or a cost of inaction.
5. Who's doing the chasing? If every touch is you reaching out and nothing comes back 75% of the time, that's a red flag

A deal that fails one of these might be saveable, a deal that fails three or more is a ghost. Move on. 

What you're left with is smaller but more real. Now you get to spend your time on 12 live deals instead of spreading yourself thin across 31. And, now you’ve got a better picture of what your next deals need to look like. 

Clearing the graveyard creates leverage. 

This week: open your CRM and run every "open" deal against these 5 questions. Move every deal that fails into closed/lost (or back a stage). 

Then hit reply and tell me where you ended up!