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What is deal inspection in a sales forecast?

A deal is not real because of its stage or its percentage. Deal inspection tests one live opportunity claim by claim, and whatever nobody can put a name and a date behind is counted as forecast risk.

BY RYAN MATHEWS PUBLISHED · SEP 2026 5 MIN READ FILED · REFERENCE
Part 6 of 7 · The inspection arc →
Definition
Term
Deal inspection
Definition
The test of whether a single live B2B sales opportunity is supported by evidence. Every claim it rests on carries the name of the person who confirmed it and the date they confirmed it, or it is recorded as forecast risk.
Used by
B2B sales reps, frontline sales managers, and revenue leaders, during pipeline review and forecast calls.
Distinct from
Deal due diligence in mergers and acquisitions, and the physical inspection of property or equipment. Both share the word and nothing else.
The short answer

Deal inspection is a B2B sales forecasting practice: the test of whether a single live opportunity is supported by evidence, in which every claim the deal rests on carries the name of the person who confirmed it and the date they confirmed it, and anything that cannot be named is recorded as forecast risk rather than chased later as a detail. A deal’s forecast risk is the count of things nobody has verified, not the stage it sits in and not the percentage attached to it. Between 40 and 60 percent of qualified B2B deals end in no decision rather than a loss to a competitor, and the claims deal inspection checks are the ones that go unverified before that happens.

Deal inspection is not deal due diligence in mergers and acquisitions, which shares the word and nothing else, and it has nothing to do with the physical inspection of property or equipment. In the vocabulary of sales forecasting, pipeline coverage quality works at the pipeline level, asking whether there is enough and where it came from; deal inspection works at the deal level, asking whether this one is real and how you would know; forecast survivability works at the number level, asking whether the total still holds when a real deal moves anyway. Deal inspection is the input to forecast survivability.

What does deal inspection test?

Six lines. Each one takes a name and a date, or the word “unknown.” No adjectives in an answer.

  1. Signature. Who signs, who told you that, and when.
  2. Money. Where the budget comes from, whether it is approved, by whom, and on what date they said so.
  3. Date. What event on the customer’s calendar produces it.
  4. Alternative. What the customer does today instead, and what that costs them.
  5. Dependency. What has to be true on the customer’s side that is outside your control, and who verified it.
  6. Behavior. What the customer did since last week, not what they said.

What does a deal inspection look like on one real opportunity?

Take a deal sitting in commit at the same stage as every other committed deal that quarter, and run the six lines.

  1. Signature: the operations director, confirmed on a call two weeks ago. Named and dated.
  2. Money: “budget is approved”, but nobody can say who approved it or when. Unknown.
  3. Date: the seller’s end-of-quarter target, not an event on the customer’s calendar. Unknown.
  4. Alternative: the customer’s current supplier agreement renews in ninety days, and the customer said so on a named call. Named and dated.
  5. Dependency: the customer’s IT team has to approve the integration, and nobody on the selling side has spoken to them. Unknown.
  6. Behavior: the customer returned the site survey last Tuesday. Named and dated.

Three unknowns. By the count, this deal is not a commit. It is a project with three owners to assign this week, even though its stage and its percentage are identical to deals that passed every line.

A deal that fails inspection while also carrying more than 40 percent of a quarter is a compounded risk. Single-deal exposure shows that concentration alone fails to close about four times out of five.

Common questions

What is deal inspection in sales?

Deal inspection is the practice of testing whether a single live B2B opportunity is backed by evidence rather than belief. Each claim the deal rests on, the signature, the money, the date, is checked against a name and a date confirming it. Anything that cannot be named is not assumed true. It is recorded as forecast risk.

What questions should you ask when inspecting a deal?

Ask the six lines directly: who signs and when they said so, where the budget comes from and who approved it, what event on the customer’s calendar produces the date, what the customer does today if nothing changes, what has to be true on the customer’s side that is outside your control, and what the customer did, not said, since last week. Each answer needs a name and a date, or the word unknown.

How does deal inspection reduce forecast risk?

Forecast risk in a deal is not set by its stage and not by a percentage assigned to it. It is set by the count of claims nobody has verified. Deal inspection reduces that risk by forcing every claim, the signature, the money, the date, the alternative, the dependency, the behavior, to carry a name and a date or be marked unknown. Two deals sitting at the identical stage can carry very different risk, because the difference between them is evidence rather than proximity to close. Running the six lines on every committed deal converts a forecast built on stage and instinct into one built on what has actually been confirmed, and by whom.

How is deal inspection different from a pipeline review?

A pipeline review works at the level of the whole pipeline. It asks whether there is enough total coverage and where that coverage came from, which is pipeline coverage quality. Deal inspection works one level down, at the level of a single opportunity, and asks whether that one deal is real and how you would know. A pipeline review can confirm that coverage looks adequate while every deal inside it remains uninspected. The full side-by-side of the two operations is on the comparison page, pipeline review is not deal inspection.

Is deal inspection the same as deal due diligence?

No. Deal due diligence describes the review of financial, legal and operational records before a merger or acquisition closes. Deal inspection is a sales forecasting practice applied to a single live B2B opportunity inside a seller’s own pipeline, unrelated to a company purchase. The two share a word and nothing else, and deal inspection also has no relationship to the physical inspection of property or equipment.

How often should you inspect a deal?

Run the full six-line inspection at the moment a deal is committed to the forecast. After that, inspect it again only when something about the deal changes: a new date, a new signer, a shift in budget. Re-running all six lines every week on an unchanged deal produces noise. Re-running them the moment something changes is what keeps the forecast current.

How do I know if a deal in my forecast is real?

A deal in a sales forecast is real when every claim it rests on can be traced to a person and a date: who signs, who approved the budget, what event on the customer’s calendar sets the timeline, and what the customer actually did since last week. Deal inspection checks those claims one by one. Any claim nobody can name is counted as forecast risk, and a deal with several of them is not a commit, whatever its stage says.

Note · Read next

This page defines the six lines. Edition 017 runs them against a live deal, script included: The Deal You Cannot Prove.

About the author

Written by Ryan Mathews, a sales leader with more than thirty years carrying and leading a number, from a delivery route to running sales across North America. He has rebuilt a sales team from 175 to 500 sellers and lifted output seventy-five percent in three years, and writes Frontline to Forecast to put that system on the record.

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