Deal qualification checklist
Whatever methodology you run, the underlying questions rhyme. This checklist distills them so you can gut-check any deal.
A deal that cannot answer these is not a forecast, it is a hope.
Short answer
A deal qualification checklist confirms a deal is real before you forecast it: a quantified pain and impact, a compelling event, access to the economic buyer, a champion, clear decision criteria and process, and a mapped path to signature. Below is a framework-agnostic checklist you can apply to any open deal.
The checklist
A confident yes to each; anything unknown is a gap to close.
- Pain: is there a quantified, compelling problem?
- Impact: have we sized the cost of inaction in their numbers?
- Compelling event: is there a real date forcing a decision?
- Economic buyer: do we have access to the person who controls budget?
- Champion: is there an insider with power selling for us?
- Decision criteria: do we know the tests we must pass, and can we win them?
- Decision process: have we mapped the steps and approvals to signature?
- Paper process: do we know procurement, legal, and security timelines?
- Competition: do we know the alternatives, including status quo, and why we win?
How to use it
Turn gaps into next steps.
- Score each red, yellow, or green on the deal record.
- In deal reviews, only forecast-commit deals that are mostly green.
- Every red becomes a specific action with an owner and a date.
Use this in Ardovo
You do not have to start from a blank page. Tell Rook, Ardovo's AI operator, what you need (for example, "deal qualification checklist") and it drafts a version grounded in your real pipeline, personalizes it to the specific deal or contact, and saves it to the record in one step. Every framework lives in one shared library, so the whole team runs the same play.
Frequently asked questions
What should a deal qualification checklist include?
Quantified pain and impact, a compelling event, access to the economic buyer, a champion, clear decision criteria and process, a mapped paper process, and known competition. These are the questions every major methodology shares, distilled into one gut-check.
When should I qualify a deal against this checklist?
Continuously, updated after every meaningful call, and formally before you commit the deal to a forecast. Qualification is not a one-time gate; a deal that was green last month can turn red when a champion leaves or a competitor enters.
What do I do with the gaps?
Turn each red into a specific next step with an owner and a date. The value of a checklist is not the score, it is the action it forces. A deal with three reds and a plan to close them beats a deal with three reds and no plan.