Your Pipeline Is Lying to You (And How to Tell)

We talked about contact database problems. Now let's talk about deals.

Open your HubSpot deal board right now. Look at your pipeline value. That number at the top that says how much revenue you have in play.

I'll bet my lunch that number is lying to you.

The anatomy of a lying pipeline

A healthy pipeline has deals moving. A lying pipeline has deals camping. They sit in stages for months. Their close dates slip into the past and nobody updates them.

Good sales pipeline management means knowing the difference. Here's how to spot it:

Test 1: The 90-Day Check

How many deals haven't had any activity logged in 90 days? If it's more than 20% of your open deals, your pipeline is full of ghosts. This is basic CRM optimization hygiene.

Test 2: The Past-Due Close Date Audit

Pull up every deal with a close date in the past that's still marked "Open." If you have more than a handful, your forecasting is fiction. Any RevOps consulting engagement starts here.

Test 3: The Amount Audit

How many open deals have no amount, suspiciously round numbers, or amounts that haven't been updated since creation? This is a CRM data quality problem dressed up as a sales problem.

Test 4: The Stage Criteria Test

Pick your third or fourth pipeline stage. Look at 10 random deals. How many actually meet whatever criteria you think that stage requires?

Why this matters

Bad forecasting means you tell leadership you'll close $500K, you close $200K, and now they don't trust your numbers. Resources get misallocated because you're assigning reps to "hot" deals that are actually dead. And you can't improve a process you can't see clearly.

How to fix it

Weekly: every rep reviews their deals. Anything without recent activity gets a next step or moves to closed-lost. Monthly: pipeline scrub meeting. Are deals in the right place? Are amounts accurate? Quarterly: full audit. Which stages have the worst conversion?

A proper HubSpot audit surfaces all of this. The RSM Audit App pulls pipeline metrics automatically.

Next up: HubSpot workflow automation, and how your workflows might be running perfectly at making things worse.

Need help? Learn about our optimization services or book a free consultation.