Where is this deal, really?
Pick the one live deal that's keeping you up. Walk it down the five stages, and tick every statement you can honestly say yes to. The first gate you can't clear is where the deal is actually stuck – not where the paperwork says it is. Nothing you tick or type is saved or sent; it's yours for this sitting.
Prospecting
Decide who's worth the approach, before you spend a conversation on them.
Is there a reason the company would move now – or does it just look like a fit?
A full reads as progress. A name on a list is a guess about where a deal might be, not a deal – and a list of guesses can't tell you which of them would survive a real conversation. Only the conversation does that.
Pipeline. Every live opportunity the business is working on, with where each one has actually reached. Full entry →There's a specific reason this one is worth researching properly – not just that they'd be a good logo.
Qualification
Do the homework: enter informed, not assuming.
Have you learned enough to walk in credible – while holding your picture of the company loosely enough to be wrong?
Letting the research harden into a diagnosis. A business that reads as a growth case from outside can be an owner planning their way out – and the surface view would have sold the wrong thing.
You can enter the room informed, carrying a hypothesis you're willing to have overturned – not a pitch you're ready to give.
Discovery
Find the real need under the one they handed you.
Do you know what the company needs in order to act – not just what you've been asked to quote?
Taking the brief at face value. What they asked you to price is their own guess at their problem. would have found a healthy business – discovery is where you find the owner inside it.
Qualification. Deciding, on evidence rather than optimism, whether an opportunity is real – whether something is genuinely pushing the buyer to act, whether the people who can decide are involved, and whether the work fits what the business does well. Full entry →You can name what they actually need in a way they'd recognize as truer than the request they walked in with.
Scope & alignment
Shape the work together, and hear the conclusion in their words.
Can the person who signs it off say back, in their own words, why this is worth doing – including the part they'd have to carry?
Mistaking your own clarity for theirs. You can see why it's worth it long before they do; alignment isn't reached until they've said it, not nodded at it.
The decision is effectively already made between you – the paperwork is the only thing missing.
Proposal
Write down the agreement you've already reached.
Is this a record of something settled – or a last attempt to talk them into it?
Using the proposal to do the selling. If it's carrying the persuasion, a stage upstream got skipped – and a polished proposal is the most expensive place to discover that.
Sending it changes nothing that wasn't already true. It confirms; it doesn't convince.
Tick the statements that are true of your deal today. From your first tick, this names the stage the deal is stuck at and the gate it has to clear.
This part needs JavaScript. Without it the boxes still tick, but nothing is worked out here – the five stages above carry the same walk, and the first one you can't fully tick is your answer.
Where you can't clear a gate – that isn't a lost deal, it's the deal telling you where it actually is. Go back and do the work that stage is asking for, rather than carrying the deal forward into a proposal that would have to do that stage's work as well as its own.
What are the five stages of a sales deal?
Prospecting, qualification, discovery, scope and alignment, and proposal. They run in order, and the proposal is last for a reason: it writes down an agreement you've already reached, it doesn't go hunting for one. A stage you can't fully complete is a stage you haven't finished – and the deal is stuck there.
How do I know what stage my deal is really in?
Walk the deal down the five stages, one gate at a time. The first gate you can't clear is where the deal actually is – not where the paperwork says it is. The stalled deals we see are further back than they look – stuck in discovery or alignment while a proposal sits out ahead of them.
Why do deals stall or go quiet?
In our experience, because a stage got skipped. A proposal sent before discovery and alignment are done is carrying the persuasion itself – and that's the most expensive place to discover the work was never earned. When a deal goes quiet, the real question is which upstream gate was never actually cleared.
When is a deal ready for a proposal?
When the decision is effectively already made between you, and the paperwork is the only thing missing. A good proposal confirms; it doesn't convince. If sending it would change something that wasn't already true, you're not at the proposal stage yet – however polished the document is.
Want to see where your selling stands overall?
The two-minute sales scorecard places you – on the plateau, owner-held, or built to run without you – and points you to the areas worth starting with. No email, no sign-up.
This is yours to use, whether or not we ever speak.
This guide is yours to run any time, on your own. A fractional seat is a different thing altogether: a senior operator in the room on your actual deals – the strategy behind the pipeline, the judgment about which deals are worth your firm's effort and which aren't, and the standing hand that builds a way of selling that keeps producing. The first conversation is free – bring the deal you just placed.
What this produces is information, not advice – general by design, built from nothing but your own answers, and no substitute for guidance from someone qualified who knows your situation. Using it creates no client relationship or contract with Stoneforge LLC; results are provided as-is, errors and omissions excepted – see our full terms.