Sales pipelines are great… until they’re not.
When deals stall, data goes missing, and close dates keep slipping, what you have isn’t a pipeline. It’s a mess. But fixing it doesn’t have to mean a full rebuild or days spent combing through spreadsheets. A focused pipeline audit can give you clarity and direction in less than an hour.
Here’s how to check your pipeline’s health with just four steps, no fluff or guesswork.
The 4-Step Pipeline Audit (~15 mins per step)
1. Review Your Deal Stages
Start by looking at how your pipeline is structured. Are the stages clear? Do they match how your team actually sells?
Too often, pipelines include catch-alls like “Negotiation” or “Follow-Up” that don’t mean much. Every stage should represent a clear step in the process, like “Proposal Sent” or “Decision Pending.”
Example: If one rep logs “Negotiation” after an initial quote and another does it after final pricing, your data becomes inconsistent. That makes reporting unreliable and deal progress harder to track.
Refine stage names so they reflect specific actions. Simple adjustments here can improve the entire pipeline’s clarity.
2. Identify Stalled Deals
Next, filter for deals that haven’t seen recent activity–typically anything untouched in 14 to 30 days, depending on your sales cycle.
Focus on whether a clear next step has been logged. If not, follow up, reassign, or close it out. Don’t let valuable opportunities go cold quietly.
BuddyCRM makes this easy with saved filters, activity views, and alerts so your team can quickly surface stale deals and take action.
3. Spot Gaps in Key Data
Now look for missing fields: no deal owner, no close date, no value. These gaps might seem small, but they affect forecasting, accountability, and follow-through.
Whether your CRM displays deals in a table, a kanban board, or timeline view, incomplete records are usually easy to spot once you’re looking for them.
Fill in what’s missing, or assign someone to track it down. Clean data makes everything else faster.
4. Clear Out Dead Weight
Finally, archive or remove deals that no longer belong: duplicates, unqualified leads, or long-cold opportunities.
A bloated pipeline doesn’t help anyone. The goal is a clear view of where your team’s attention should go, not an inflated deal count.
Set a recurring time each month to do this. It keeps your pipeline accurate and your focus sharp.
Make It Stick with CRM Support
A pipeline audit doesn’t need to be complicated to be useful. Done regularly, it brings focus, visibility, and better forecasting without taking up your whole afternoon.
The key is making it part of your routine and having the right tools to support it.
BuddyCRM is built to make this easy. With filters for last activity, stage age, missing fields, and more, your team can surface issues quickly and fix them just as fast.
For a deeper look at sales pipeline strategy, especially for complex or longer sales cycles, explore our guide on Optimising Sales Pipelines in Manufacturing.
Ready to Simplify Pipeline Management?
With BuddyCRM, pipeline visibility isn’t buried in reports. It’s built into your daily workflow.
From stalled deals to missing data, you can spot issues fast, take action without friction, and keep your pipeline moving in the right direction.
Book a demo today to see how BuddyCRM helps your team stay focused, accurate, and in control of every stage.