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Pipeline stages are a lie
Leore Spira on why pipeline stages track motion, not decisions, and the three-part discipline that fixed it
The deal was in "Negotiation."
I sat down with Leore Spira to get to the bottom of pipeline forecasting. As a Revenue Operations Executive with over 15 years experience building, scaling and transforming GTM Engines for SaaS companies worldwide, I was excited for her to spill the tea.
She started with a recurring example:
The deal looked healthy. Notes were clean, proposal sent, follow-ups logged.
Then she asked what the buyer had actually committed to. There was a pause. No agreed next step, no timeline, no explicit signal of movement. The deal wasn't stuck. It had never been real.
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It looked like a late-stage deal. It wasn't.
It was a forecast call, the kind where everything looks fine until you start asking better questions.
We were reviewing a deal sitting comfortably in "Negotiation." The notes were clean. A proposal had been sent. There had been multiple follow-ups. On paper, it looked exactly like the kind of deal you expect to close before the end of the quarter.
So I asked a simple question.
"What did the buyer actually commit to?"
There was a pause. Not a long one, but long enough to make the answer obvious.
There was no clear next step. No agreed timeline. No explicit confirmation from the buyer that they were moving forward. There had been conversations, yes. Activity, plenty of it. But nothing that resembled an actual decision.
And that's when it clicked.
The deal wasn't stuck. It was never really moving in the first place.
Stages Don't Equal Progress. Buyer Commitment Does.
This isn't a one-off story. It's how most pipelines operate.
From a distance, everything looks healthy. Deals are sitting in late stages. Pipeline coverage feels strong. Forecast numbers appear reasonable enough to present with confidence. But when you look closer, the foundation starts to crack.
What we call "progress" is often just motion.
A demo happens, so the stage moves forward. A proposal is sent, so it advances again. A few follow-ups occur, and the deal remains active in the system. The CRM reflects movement, so we assume the deal itself is moving.
But the buyer hasn't made a decision.
So the deal exists in a gray zone. It isn't lost, but it isn't real either. It just sits there, quietly inflating the pipeline until time forces the truth out.
Eventually, it slips.
Most Pipelines Track Motion - Not Decisions
After rebuilding GTM processes across multiple companies, I kept seeing the same pattern repeat itself.
The issue wasn't the people. It wasn't even the strategy.
It was the system.
Most GTM systems are designed to capture activity. They are very good at telling you what happened. They can show you how many calls were made, how many emails were sent, how many meetings took place, and when a proposal was delivered.
But they struggle to answer the only question that actually matters.
Is the buyer moving toward a decision?
That gap creates a dangerous illusion. The system flags a deal as late-stage, even though nothing meaningful has been agreed upon. Forecasts start to drift from reality. Pipeline looks stronger than it is. Leadership begins to trust numbers that were never grounded in actual buyer behavior.
And when deals don't close, the conversation turns to what went wrong.
But that's the wrong question.
The better question is, why did we think this deal was real in the first place?
The Shift: From Tracking Deals To Challenging Them
Fixing this didn't require more dashboards or better reporting. It required a shift in what the system was designed to enforce.
The first change was deceptively simple. We stopped asking what happened and started asking what the buyer had actually committed to.
A stage was no longer defined by an internal action, such as completing a demo or sending a proposal. It was defined by a moment of commitment from the buyer. Had they confirmed the problem and its impact? Had they validated that the solution addressed it? Had they agreed to move forward into commercial discussions?
If there was no clear commitment, the deal didn't move.
The second change was removing interpretation from the process. One of the biggest sources of pipeline distortion is ambiguity. Different reps interpret signals differently. Managers fill in gaps based on experience. Deals get pulled forward because they feel close, not because they actually are.
So we eliminated that flexibility.
Progression required something explicit, something that could be clearly identified and verified. Moving into a later stage depended on a specific moment, often captured in the buyer's own words. Not a feeling. Not an assumption. A clear signal that something had changed.
At the same time, we introduced a discipline that proved to be brutally effective. Every deal needed a next step, a specific date, and mutual agreement with the buyer. Without those three elements, the deal wasn't progressing. It was drifting.
This single change surfaced more pipeline risk than any dashboard we had ever built.
The final shift was separating what is real from what is hopeful. For a long time, all deals lived together in the same pipeline view, treated as if they carried equal weight. But they don't. Some deals are backed by real movement. Others are sustained by activity and optimism.
Once we made that distinction visible, everything became clearer.
The Real Problem: Your System Isn't Telling The Truth
The initial impact was uncomfortable.
Pipeline size dropped. Fewer deals appeared in late stages. Forecast numbers became smaller.
At first, it felt like things were getting worse.
But for the first time, it was accurate.
And from that point forward, things started to improve in a way that was actually sustainable. Reps focused their time on opportunities that had a real chance of closing. Managers had better conversations grounded in facts rather than assumptions. Deals either moved forward with clarity or were disqualified earlier, before consuming more time and energy.
Over time, the results followed. Win rates improved. Sales cycles became more predictable. Forecast accuracy increased.
But the most important change wasn't in the metrics.
It was in behavior.
Reps stopped updating the CRM to make it look right. They started using it to understand what was actually happening. Leadership stopped questioning the numbers because the numbers finally reflected reality.
If your pipeline looks strong but nothing is closing, the issue isn't visibility. It isn't tooling. It isn't reporting.
It's that your system is capturing motion instead of truth.
And until that changes, your forecast will always feel like a guess.
So the next time you look at a deal sitting comfortably in a late stage, ask one simple question.
What has the buyer actually committed to?
If there isn't a clear answer, then the deal isn't as far along as it seems.
It never was.
By Leore Spira, Fractional RevOps & GTM Advisor, RevOrch
Want to learn from more Revenue Creators like Leore? Join the RevGenius community and be part of the movement rewriting the GTM playbook.
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