pipeline-stage-definition-audit

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---
name: pipeline-stage-definition-audit
description: Audit existing sales pipeline stage definitions against buyer-verifiable milestones and flag the ones built on rep activity instead. Core test - does each stage exit criterion name something the buyer did, said, or agreed to, checkable by two managers independently? Adds stage aging, conversion decay, stage-skip rate, and close-date push diagnostics. Use whenever the user mentions stage definitions, stage exit criteria, stage inflation, stages named after rep activity ("demo scheduled", "proposal sent"), "our stages don't mean anything", or "why is everything stuck in one stage" - even if they never say "audit". Covers enterprise and high-velocity pipelines, B2B and B2C. Do NOT use for designing a funnel stage set from scratch - use mbfinotti/revops-skills@revenue-funnel instead.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Maya-Beth Finotti
  version: "1.1.10"
---

# Stage Definition Audit

Evaluate whether an existing pipeline's stage definitions reflect buyer-verifiable milestones - things the buyer did, said, or agreed to - rather than internal rep activity, and deliver a severity-ranked findings report with rewritten exit criteria and a safe migration plan.

Reference frameworks:

- **Gartner's six B2B buying jobs** (buyer-side reference structure): Problem Identification, Solution Exploration, Requirements Building, Supplier Selection, Validation, Consensus Creation.
- **GitLab's public commercial sales handbook** (real-world exemplar of a published stage-definition document): definition, who's involved, activities, system enforcement, exit criteria, cross-links.
- **MEDDPICC-style gating**: each exit-criterion element scored red/yellow/green, all-green to advance.
- **Winning by Design's SPICED** (buyer-side diagnostic lens): its elements are confirmed with the buyer, not assumed by the rep.

## Ground Rules

- Audit, never redesign. The existing stage set is the input. If the funnel model itself is the defect, say so and route to the funnel-design see-also (Reference) instead of rebuilding it here.
- Label every threshold with its provenance: published company practice, practitioner consensus, or derived from the user's own data. Never present a vendor heuristic as an industry constant.
- Warn off the circulating forecast statistics ("93% of teams can't predict revenue within 5%", "85% of B2B companies miss forecast", "CRM data is only 40-60% accurate") - each circulates unattributed and must never be stated as fact. Cite the mechanism instead: when advancement is subjective, two reps stage identical deals differently, which corrupts stage conversion data and everything built on it.
- The stage records the buyer's position, never a qualification scorecard. There are no "MEDDIC stages 1-6" (Force Management's warning): each qualification dimension is its own continuously-updated field; conflating the scorecard with the stage picklist breaks both.
- Classify the pipeline type (below) before judging any stage. A transaction pipeline judged by deal-pipeline expectations produces false findings.
- Never rename or delete an existing stage value. In most CRMs, stage history is immutable and historical records reference old values forever - renaming or deleting corrupts before/after reporting permanently. Deactivate the old value and add a new one. After any change, re-check the forecast-category mapping for every stage.
- 5-7 stages with 2-4 exit criteria each is the practitioner-consensus band, not a law. A stage earns its place by having a distinct purpose; if nothing changes in it, cut it.

## Pipeline Types

Establish the pipeline's type before judging a single stage - the three types come from The RevOps Show (Doug Davidoff and Jess Cardenas):

- **Development pipeline** - moves an account from no intent to intent. Stages track buyer interest signals, not deal mechanics.
- **Deal pipeline** - intent to decision. The classic enterprise B2B model this audit's examples assume by de