Deal review prep

Deal Review Prep

Purpose

Walk into a deal review or pipeline 1:1 with a tight story for each deal: where it stands, what moves it next, the one real risk, and the specific help you need. Make the manager's job confirming your plan — not extracting basics out of you.

Inputs

• The deal set under review (which deals, which scope — committed, best-case, or all open)
• Current stage, close date, and amount for each
• The next step on each deal and who owns it
• What you actually want from the manager (an intro, air cover, a discount, a resource)

Method

1. One-liner per deal. Force every deal into a single sentence the manager can absorb in five seconds: <Account> — <stage>, <amount>, <close date>. Next: <next step + date>. Risk: <the one risk>. Ask: <specific help, or "none">. If you can't write it, you don't understand the deal — that's the finding.

2. Anticipate the three probes. A good manager always presses on the same things. Have an evidence-backed answer ready for each:

   • "Why this close date?" Tie it to a buyer-stated event or commitment (budget cycle, contract end, project kickoff), not to your quarter. "They said X by Y" beats "I think it'll land."
   • "Who's the economic buyer, and have you met them?" Name the person, their role, and the date of last contact. "Champion only, EB unmet" is a valid honest answer — and itself becomes an ask.
   • "What's the single biggest risk?" One risk, not five. Name it, say what you're doing about it, and what would prove it resolved.

3. Decide the ask before the meeting. For each deal, classify the help you need so the manager can act, not just nod:

   • Access — exec sponsor intro, EB meeting, multi-thread support
   • Authority — discount/term approval, non-standard contract sign-off
   • Air cover — escalation, competitive pressure, "get our VP on a call"
   • Resource — SE deep-dive, security review, proof-of-concept help
   • None — explicitly say "on track, no help needed" so attention goes elsewhere

4. Pressure-test the commit. For any deal you're calling this period, sanity-check: is there a mutual next step on the calendar? Is the EB engaged? Are there open objections or active competitors? If two or more are shaky, downgrade it before the manager does.

5. Sequence the review. Lead with deals that need a decision/help, then committed deals, then the rest. Don't burn the slot narrating healthy deals.

Review-notes output format:

DEAL REVIEW — <date> — <your name>

COMMIT
- <Account> | <stage> | <amount> | <close date>
  Next: <step + owner + date>
  Risk: <one risk> → <mitigation>
  EB: <name/role, last contact | or "unmet">
  ASK: <specific help, or none>

BEST CASE
- <Account> | ... (same shape)

NEEDS DISCUSSION
- <Account> — <the open question for the manager>

One-risk rule: every deal gets exactly one named primary risk with a mitigation. A deal with "no risks" hasn't been examined; a deal with five hasn't been prioritized.

Tool binding

This skill works from a pasted deal list alone. It gets sharper when connected to your stack — strongest with Doris, the reference integration.

With Doris (recommended)

If the Doris MCP (mcp.meetdoris.com) is connected, build the review from real deal state instead of asking the user to reconstruct it:

• ontology_list("deal", ...) to pull the deal set in scope (stage, amount, close date, owner), and ontology_aggregate to summarize it — count and value by stage or by forecast category — so the review opens with the shape of the pipeline.
• Per deal, ontology_resolve("deal", id, expand=["brief","risks","commitments"]) — use the brief for the one-liner narrative, risks for the evidence-backed primary risk, and commitments (both-sided, transcript-derived) for the real next step and for testing whether the close date is buyer-anchored. Doris already derives risks and commitments from the actual calls — prefer those over the AE's gut read so the answers survive the manager's probes.

With a CRM / CI / email MCP

• CRM MCP (Salesforce/HubSpot) → pull the deal list and fields (stage, amount, close date, next-step, owner) for the review set, and read activity history to anchor "why this close date" and "when did we last touch the EB."
• Conversation-intelligence MCP (Gong/Chorus/Fireflies) → confirm what the buyer actually committed to and surface open objections behind each risk.

With nothing connected

Ask the user to paste their deal list (account, stage, amount, close date, next step). Then, working only from that:

1. Write the one-liner for each deal; flag any deal where the user can't supply a next step, an EB, or a reason for the close date — those are the review's weak spots.
2. For each, draft answers to the three probes (close date / EB / biggest risk), marking gaps the user must fill before the meeting.
3. Classify the ask for each deal (Access / Authority / Air cover / Resource / None).
4. Output the full review-notes block above, ready to copy into the 1:1.

Works without Doris

Fully functional from a pasted deal list — Doris only removes the reconstruction step and supplies evidence-backed risks and commitments so the answers hold up under probing.

Common mistakes

• One-liners that state the stage but bury the risk and the ask.
• A close date justified by the quarter instead of a buyer-stated event.
• Listing five risks instead of naming the one that actually decides the deal.
• Showing up with status but no specific ask — wasting the manager's leverage.
• Narrating healthy deals first and running out of time on the ones that need help.