A sales review checklist for the end of the quarter

A quarter-end review has one job: to turn a quarter of activity into a short list of decisions. It answers four things. What happened, why deals were lost, what is truly in the pipeline, and what changes next quarter. The twenty questions below are grouped to match, with the evidence to bring for each. They are built for an owner and a small team with a sheet of enquiries and orders, not a data team. The meeting should end with a one-page list, not a pile of observations.

What to bring

Bring records, not memories: the enquiry sheet for the quarter, every order with date and value, every lost or abandoned quote with the reason written at the time, and the list of open quotes. If open quotes are old and doubtful, clean them first with the pipeline clean-up routine. Reviewing a dirty pipeline wastes the first hour.

Group one: what happened (bring the order list)

1. How many enquiries came in, and from which sources?
2. How many became quotes, and how many quotes became orders?
3. What was the total order value, and the largest and smallest order?
4. Which three customers account for the most business, and did any order less than before?
5. Which product sold far more or far less than you expected?

State each as a count or a sum. If an answer needs "roughly", the record is incomplete, and the first decision is to mend the record.

Group two: what was lost (bring the loss notes)

6. Which five quotes were the largest losses, and what did each buyer say?
7. Did any loss go to the same competitor twice?
8. How many enquiries were never answered, and why?
9. Which losses were about price, which about speed, and which about trust or fit?
10. Is any lost buyer worth another call now?
11. Who told you the reason: the buyer, or the seller's guess?

For honest reasons rather than excuses, see how to run a win-loss review. A seller's account of a loss is a guess until the buyer has said it.

Do not defend the numbers in this group. If a sale you counted came from an old customer who would have ordered anyway, say so and note it.

Group three: what is really in the pipeline (bring open quotes)

12. How many open quotes are younger than your normal decision time, and how many older?
13. Which five open quotes, if won, would change the quarter, and what is each one's next step and date?
14. Who decides at the buyer, and have we met that person?
15. Which quotes should be closed as lost today? They flatter the forecast.

Group four: what changes (bring a pen)

16. Which stage, enquiry, follow-up, quote or repeat, leaked the most?
17. Which customer, product or routine took the most hours for the least revenue this quarter?
18. What will we start, in one sentence with a name beside it?
19. Which customer or product do we want more of, and what is the first action?
20. What number will we look at after two weeks to know the change is working?

Who speaks first

Let sellers answer before the owner. If the owner gives a view of a lost deal first, the room tends to agree. The person who handled each deal reads the buyer's words from the sheet, and the owner asks only "what did the buyer actually say?" until each group is done. Keep a clock visible. Group one should take under a quarter of the time, because the numbers are known. The arguments belong in groups two and four.

Write decisions, not minutes

At the end, read the page aloud once so each person hears their line and can object while the room is still together. Keep one page with three columns: the decision, who owns it, and the date it is checked. Limit it to five rows. A review that produces fifteen resolutions tends to produce none. A decision you cannot check, such as "improve follow-up", goes back for rewording until it names a person, a number and a date.

A Bhilai welding-supplies dealer reads the quarter

Imagine an invented dealer in Bhilai, every figure made up, who sells welding electrodes, cutting tools and safety gear to fabrication shops and a steel-plant contractor. The dealer's quarterly meetings had become talk about steel prices. This time the dealer asked the twenty questions. The sheet showed that two of the five largest customers had ordered less, which nobody had noticed because one big order kept the total flat. Group two showed three of the five biggest losses had gone to the same trader, who delivered the next day.

The first list of decisions ran to ten items and included "increase sales". It was cut to four: ring the two customers who had slowed down, stock the ten fastest-moving items to match next-day delivery, close the oldest quotes as lost, and read the repeat-order number after two weeks. Each had a name and a date. The meeting took two hours. Stocking for next-day delivery tied up about ₹1.2 lakh, and two weeks later only one of the two slowing customers had ordered again.

When twenty questions is too many

For a shop with a handful of quotes a quarter, twenty questions are heavy. Use groups two and four only. If you have no usable record of lost deals, do not guess. Start writing reasons now and review the first quarter you have them for. An honest gap beats an invented answer.

Print the questions, send the sheet

Pick the date, print the questions, and send the sheet to the team two days ahead so they come prepared. Revenue leadership and management reviews is the related work for turning this into a routine, and the sales section shows where the review sits. When you want an outside hand on it, tell us what you need.