The Pursuit Scorecard

Deal The rep says it is at

What the rep says

What the evidence says

ABCD stage

Time in stage

Tick what you can prove

Ten stages, 10% each. Each stage opens when the one before it is complete. The three shaded stages are gates: clearing one moves the deal into the next band. The score is the highest stage with every box ticked. Completed stages fold away. Tap a heading to open it.

How fast is the pursuit progressing?

A deal that has not moved to the next sales stage in 30 days is looked at again by the sales lead. Above 40%, it drops one stage. The sales lead can hold it at the same stage, once, with a dated target.

Days the pursuit has remained in the current sales stage 12

Copy gives you a plain text summary for your CRM or spreadsheet. Print gives you the scored page, with every stage open, to save as a PDF.

The method on one page

Ten stages. Three gates. Six rules.

Every pursuit carries a score from 0% to 100%. The score is set by evidence, not by opinion. The rep enters the evidence. The stage decides what that evidence is worth. The sales lead owns the pipeline and reviews it.

The bands

Score	Status	Entered by
10% to 30%	Not qualified	Discovery
40% to 60%	Qualified pipeline	Gate at Stage 4
70%	Forecast	Gate at Stage 7
80% to 90%	Commit	Gate at Stage 8
100%	Closed	Signatures

The ladder

Stage	Milestone	Evidence required

The rules

A deal enters Qualified pipeline, Forecast or Commit only by clearing the gate at Stage 4, 7 or 8, with the sales lead having seen the evidence.
Above 40%, a deal drops one stage after 30 days without new evidence. The dates the buyer gave for their process are the reference, not a guess.
The rep cannot reverse a drop. The sales lead can, once per deal, with a new target date. When that date passes without evidence, the drop stands.
A rep may move a deal up more than one stage at once, with the evidence for each. The sales lead reviews it at the next pipeline call. No stage is skipped.
The sales lead can hold a deal or move it down on judgment. The sales lead cannot move a deal up without evidence. The score is never more than one stage below the evidence.
It works in any tool. Keep three fields next to the stage: date entered, days in stage, and whether the sales lead has held it.

Where the rules come from

Kapil Raval carried enterprise forecasts to the board for 25 years at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and was wrong often enough to want rules in place of opinions. Each rule here comes from a deal that was forecast and did not close. The working version of the scorecard, with the evidence lists for each gate and the help to run it in a weekly pipeline call, is part of an RCI engagement.