Why Most Sales Pipelines Are Full of “Opportunities” That Never Close

How many times have you looked at your pipeline and thought, “This is mostly fluff”? Deals that look good on paper but never close, conversations that get labeled as “opportunities” way too soon, an you spend countless hours with your team cutting down the fluff to figure out what is real and what is not.

True story, a team I talked to spends eight hours a month combing through their pipeline to try to figure out what is real and what is not. 8x12 = 96 hours a YEAR! Yikes!

So what’s the issue?

The problem is simple: sellers are too quick to call anything an “opportunity.” A buyer shows a hint of interest, asks about pricing, and boom – they’re in the pipeline. We call this “happy ears,” where sellers hear what they want instead of facing the facts. But we can't blame sellers, this starts at the top with leadership teaching reps to move away from bad qualification behavior. Traditional qualification methods like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) are to blame. And I know you may be reading this and saying - we don't use BANT...but are you using fancy BANT? Fancy BANT is some derivative of BANT that you have masqued so you can say, no, we don't use BANT.

The Trap of Traditional Qualification

Many reps have been taught to qualify based on some form of need, budget, timeline, if it's the decision maker, their urgency or relationship, or their interest in the product. Here’s the problem with most of those: they are seller-focused. It’s about us – can we fit into their budget, can they decide, do they have a timeline, do they deem this as urgent? But none of that tells us if they actually have a problem they can solve.

Let’s break down why these BANT criteria don’t cut it:

1. Interest isn’t urgency. Just because they’re curious doesn’t mean they’re ready to act.
2. Budget? It’s almost never set in stone. If the problem is big enough, funds magically appear.
3. Timeline shifts when stakes are high. If the cost of doing nothing is super serious to the business, you best believe people can change up their timeline.
4. Relationship is overrated. I've had plenty of relationships with prospects WHO NEVER BOUGHT.

If we keep using these checkboxes as “qualification,” we’re setting ourselves up for a pipeline that may keep dragging it's feet.....for years. Time to keep an open mind...

A Better Way: Qualify Based on Problems, Not Boxes

Consider qualification that goes beyond budget and timelines and focuses on helping your buyer. It’s about understanding if the prospect has a problem worth solving. Instead of asking if they can buy, we should be asking if their problem is manifesting itself in a way that they may not realize and their cost of inaction is too great. Here's a better way to think about qualification:

• Does the prospect have a problem we can fix?
• Do they actually agree they have this problem?
• Do they want to fix it?
• Are they willing to go on this journey with us?

I recently had a potential client that, after three calls, still hadn’t made it into my pipeline. They were interested, asking about pricing and timelines, but when I pressed, they did not understand WHY I was seeking to find out more information about their business problems and their team and their desired goals for 2025. Since they were unwilling to go on the journey to discuss these, I had no problem environment. I will not sell people the thing as I have absolutely NO idea if I can actually help them without this data. For many sellers with “happy ears,” this would’ve been an easy opportunity. But I wasn’t convinced. Here’s why:

• Problem? Not clear.
• Do they agree it’s a problem? Unsure, since they wouldn’t go deeper.
• Do they want to fix it? You can’t fix what you don’t see as an issue.
• Willing to go on the journey? Yes, but without a problem, this doesn’t mean much.

In the end, I didn’t put them in the pipeline. They ended up going with a more traditional approach, and I didn’t waste my time on a deal that wasn’t a fit. They product bought the thing without seeing a clear line to which problems it was going to fix. A very risky move IMHO.

Keeping the Pipeline Clean

Sales leaders, this is the message your teams need to hear: if there’s no problem and if there are no impacts, there’s no deal. Forget the budget, forget the timeline – if the issue isn’t big enough to move the needle for the prospect, the opportunity isn’t real.

This means your team has to be aligned on the business problems you solve and run a really kick a** discovery process. When they qualify based on actual problems, the pipeline stops looking like a list of “maybes” and starts looking like a true forecast. The result? Accurate, actionable opportunities, less fluff, and more focus.

So let’s stop the happy ears.

Hi. I'm Celeste, a Certified Gap Selling Training Partner who geeks out over teams nailing discovery by understanding the unique problems they solve for their customers and how to find BID information during calls to be able to say - this is what happens when you choose not to change. An active seller, I do the thing that I train teams to do, so I stay sharp running my own pipeline. Finding your pipeline full of fluff? Perhaps sliding into my dms is worthwhile.

PS. Would love for you to snack on some sales video content here.