Here's a tip worth stealing for your next forecast call: before a deal earns a spot in your pipeline review, make yourself answer three questions about the prospect's business. If you can't, the deal isn't as real as your CRM says it is — and odds are you've been pitching, not consulting.
The rule comes from Jen Allen-Knuth, founder of DemandJen and former Chief Evangelist at Challenger. One of her early sales leaders wouldn't let a rep bring a deal to review unless they could answer:
- What do they sell? (The actual product or service — not the industry.)
- Who do they sell it to? (Their customer, their buyer, their market.)
- How do they sell it? (Their motion, channel, sales cycle, what "good" looks like for them.)
Miss one, and you didn't get to present. As Jen tells it, the first time she fumbled — offering "they're in manufacturing" when asked what a company sold — her boss didn't rescue her. He just said "who's up next?" and moved on. The lesson wasn't about trivia. It was about context, and being held accountable for doing the work.
Add it to your forecast checklist
Most forecast slippage isn't a surprise — it's a deal that never had a foundation, dressed up as commit. These three questions are a fast hygiene check that exposes that before it burns your number.
Run every deal in your forecast through them:
- Can't answer all three? That's not a commit. That's a deal where you're guessing. Move it back and go do discovery.
- Can answer them cold? You actually understand the account, which means your read on timing, urgency, and fit is grounded in something real — not hope.
The three questions turn "I feel good about this one" into a defensible call. That's the whole game in a forecast review.
This is the line between consulting and pitching
Here's why it matters beyond forecast accuracy. When you don't understand what a company sells, to whom, and how, your sales conversation defaults to one thing: pitching your solution and leaving the prospect to figure out whether it fits. You're making the buyer do the hardest work — translating your product into their world.
When you do know the answers, you can build a point of view. You can walk in with a hypothesis about how the problem you solve is probably showing up inside their business, given what they sell and who they sell it to. That's the difference between a rep reciting features and a consultant leading with a "so what."
Buyers can feel that difference instantly. A pitch gets archived. A grounded POV gets a reply — because it signals you did your homework before asking for their time.
Make it a gate, then push one level further
The reason the original rule worked is that it was a gate, not a suggestion. Advice gets ignored; a gate changes behavior, because you can't get past it without doing the work.
So build the gate into your process — no deal in the forecast, and no important first call, until you can answer what / who / how. Then push one step further, the way Jen learned to: so what? Given what they sell, to whom, and how, where does your problem most likely surface for them? That's your opening POV. That's the story you lead with instead of a pitch.
Three questions. A few minutes of homework per deal. The payoff is a forecast you can defend and conversations where you show up as a consultant worth talking to.
Credit to Jen Allen-Knuth for the original rule and framework — give her a follow for more like this. Application to forecasting and consultative selling by GTMBrand.