"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes."
Charlie Munger's observation applies to your pipeline reviews as much as it does to individual sellers. The questions you ask shape the deals your team pursues. The metrics you track determine what gets prioritised. The forecasts you accept tell sellers what you actually care about.
Most pipeline reviews optimise for signature:
When will they sign?
What's the close probability?
What can we do to accelerate?
These are reasonable, time-honoured questions. They’re also incomplete without outcome evidence.
I've watched sales teams hit quarterly targets while creating chaos downstream. Customer Success inherits deals that were never set up to succeed. Renewals become rescue operations. The revenue that looked so good in Q1 becomes the churn that destroys Q3.
Your team's commission structure might not change significantly this week. But your pipeline review can.
The Thought Experiment
Imagine your bonus was paid 90 days after your sales team's deals went live - but only for customers showing evidence they're on track to achieve the outcomes they believed they’d purchased.
Look at your current forecast. Which deals would you want to keep? Which deals would you feel confident defending?
Your instinct is telling you something.
You don't need to change the commission structure to run the experiment. You only need to change what you treat as priorities.
What Changes in the Review
When sales team leaders adopt an “Outcome Probability Mindset”, pipeline reviews shift in three ways.
Different questions get asked. Instead of "when will they sign?" the conversation moves to "what does success look like for this customer, and do we have that in writing?"Instead of "who's the decision maker?" it becomes "who are the stakeholders who'll determine whether this actually works?" Instead of "what's the close probability?" it's "what could prevent this customer from achieving results, and have we addressed it?"
Different deals get prioritised. Opportunities where the customer can articulate specific, measurable outcomes are increasingly important. Deals in which "improved efficiency" is the best anyone can offer start to look riskier. In the short term, pipelines might shrink, but that will free up time and attention, shifting toward deals that will actually deliver.
Different coaching happens. Sellers learn to surface risk early rather than hide it. They learn to build relationships with operational stakeholders, not just procurement. They learn that a smaller deal with clear outcomes beats a larger deal with vague promises.
“Close probability” indicates whether they'll sign. Close probability questions are always asked in pipeline reviews. Outcome probability indicates the likelihood that the customer will achieve the proposed outcomes. These two probabilities are related but independent, and the second is rarely investigated.
The Commercial Case
This isn't about being virtuous. It's about forecast reliability.
Deals sold with clear outcome expectations close more predictably. Stakeholder alignment reduces late-stage surprises that derail timelines. Customers who understand what they're buying implement faster and complain less.
And the revenue sticks. Renewals stop being a scramble when customers can see, in their own terms, what they've achieved. References become available when customers remember what was promised and that outcomes were achieved as expected.
Fragile revenue - the kind that closes with celebration and ends with churn - is expensive. It costs more to win, more to implement, and more to rescue. Running a pipeline review that spots fragile revenue before it enters your forecast isn't idealism. It's operational efficiency.
Why This Is More Practical Now
A decade ago, tracking outcome expectations across a team's pipeline was genuinely difficult. The documentation burden alone made it impractical at scale.
That constraint is dissolving. AI tools now exist to capture outcome agreements, track stakeholder commitments, and flag deals with vague success criteria. The practical barriers to running an outcome-focused pipeline review are lower than ever.
This isn't about technology. It's about what becomes possible when the administrative friction disappears.
The Experiment
You don't need to redesign your pipeline review to test this. You only need to add three questions to your next one.
For each opportunity in the forecast, ask:
Has the seller articulated, in the proposal documents, specifically what success looks like for this customer?
Do we have written alignment with the stakeholders who'll determine whether this works?
What could prevent this customer from achieving results, and what have we done about it?
The deals that can't answer these questions are your forecast risk. Not because they won't close - they might. But because closing is just the beginning of whether that revenue was worth winning.
The experiment costs nothing. It takes one pipeline review. And it might show you where your next quarter’s forecast is weaker than it looks.
Sales Reset helps B2B organisations build sales approaches that measure success by customer outcomes, not just contract signings. The methodology works at any level but transforms when adopted organisation-wide.
There are versions of this article for sellers [here] and for senior leaders [here].
