Look, sales isn’t complicated. People complicate sales. They fill QBRs with buzzwords, throw stages into Salesforce like confetti, and swear every deal is “looking good.” And then they wonder why their forecast is a dumpster fire.
If you strip away the noise, enterprise selling comes down to a few brutal truths. Truths that top performers quietly master while everyone else relies on hope, vibes, and whatever they think “pipeline momentum” means this week.
So let’s cut the fluff and get into the actual best practices — the ones real operators live by.
1. Champions Close Deals. Coaches Just Cheer From the Sidelines.
Everyone says they have a champion. Almost nobody actually does.
A real champion:
- Loves your product as it is today
- Has political capital
- Sells internally when you’re not in the room
- Brings you to the economic buyer
- Pushes urgency because the pain matters
A coach?
- Gives advice
- Tells you “how the org works”
- Suggests features you don’t have
- Means well, but can’t move dollars
If you confuse the two, you’re not doing “MEDDICC wrong.” You’re doing selling wrong.
2. Buying Happens by Committee — Not by the Person Who Likes You
McMahon says it, and honestly, every great CRO knows it: Sales deals aren’t won by the person who talks the most. They’re won by the person who controls:
- The budget
- The business case
- The political direction
- The evaluation criteria
Most reps spend 80% of their time talking to people who can’t say yes. People who have opinions, not authority. You want predictable revenue? You need to know exactly who controls the deal, approves the spend, drives the urgency, and owns the justification. If you can’t name them? You don’t know your deal. Period.
3. POCs Don’t Win Deals — Success Criteria Win Deals
A POC isn’t a victory lap. It’s a test, and you pass or fail based on one thing: “Did both sides agree on clear, measurable success criteria?”
If the testers don’t know what they’re supposed to evaluate, or if the criteria require functionality you don’t have, you lose. If the success criteria were never communicated to the decision-maker? Guess what? You still lose. Hope isn’t a strategy. Clarity is.
Top-performing teams define:
- What success looks like
- How it’s measured
- Who validates it
- How it connects to ROI
- How the customer will justify it internally
Everyone else? They’re praying someone “likes” the POC.
4. If Your Definitions Aren’t Unified, Your Forecast Isn’t Real
Every QBR melts into the same chaos: “We have a champion” “The EB is aligned” “POC is going well” Cool — but what does any of that actually mean?
- What’s a champion?
- What’s a coach?
- What’s a real EB vs. a shadow EB?
- What qualifies as urgency?
- What’s a real next step vs. a polite follow-up?
Best-in-class teams standardize definitions — then inspect deals against those definitions. Everyone else plays forecast roulette.
5. Time Kills All Deals. Bad Deals Die Slowly. Good Teams Know the Difference.
Deals that drag from quarter to quarter aren’t “strategic.” They’re dead. Unless new internal or external signals have changed the landscape, rolling a deal into another quarter is just pushing disappointment downstream.
- Sunset dead deals
- Remove false pipeline
- Reopen only when external signals shift
- Track probability based on historical patterns
- Don’t let “stale optimism” pollute the forecast
LoopX matters because it automatically surfaces what actually changed versus what reps wish changed.
6. Control Determines Win Probability — Not Product, Not Price, Not Features
Ask yourself: Are you controlling the deal or reacting to it?
- The next step
- Who owns it
- When it’s happening
- What decision it leads to
If the customer drives the timeline, evaluation, meetings, and justification, you’re not winning. You’re being dragged. Top reps always know the next step and who owns it.
Everyone else uses “we’re waiting to hear back” as a strategy.
7. If You Can’t Explain Why They HAVE to Buy, the Deal Isn’t Real
- Why the customer must buy
- Why they must buy now
- What happens if they don’t
- Who feels the pain
- Who benefits personally
- How the company justifies the spend internally
If none of that exists, congrats — you’ve got a “happy ears” deal.
8. Forecasting Is Broken Because Evidence Is Missing. LoopX Fixes That.
Here’s the part nobody says out loud: Reps aren’t lying. They genuinely believe their deal is real. They just don’t have the evidence to prove or disprove it. That’s why we built LoopX:
- Reads calls, emails, Slack, Gong
- Finds champions, coaches, blockers
- Detects urgency or lack of it
- Sees evaluation process drift
- Tracks POC alignment
- Flags budget authority
- Identifies false optimism
- Scores the deal based on signals, not stories
Forecasting stops being theater. It becomes truth.
⭐️ If you want predictable revenue, start practicing predictable selling.
Champion clarity. POC clarity. Evaluation clarity. Budget clarity. Urgency clarity.
Everything else is noise.
LoopX turns that clarity into a system — so your team stops guessing and starts executing.