This picks up from a piece I wrote on QSRs — that one was about the mindset (finding the real wedge, spotting qualification gaps hiding behind a skipped POV). This one is the practical layer: the actual prompts I run to get there.
A QSR is only as useful as what you bring into it. Show up with vague impressions of a deal, and you’ll get vague discussion. Show up with a sharp, specific read on where things actually stand, and you can actually influence the deal cycle instead of just narrating it.
These are three prompts I run through an AI assistant before a QSR, built to work with whatever you’ve already got — CRM notes, call summaries, email threads, whatever counts as “deal history” in your world. Paste in your own notes, adjust the specifics, and use what’s useful.
1. The pre-QSR deal summary
Use this to turn scattered notes into something you can actually walk into a room with.
I'm prepping for a QSR on the following deal. Here are my notes,
call summaries, and any relevant history: [paste your notes/CRM
export/email summaries here]
Summarize this deal in four parts:
1. Current status in one or two sentences
2. The single biggest risk to this deal closing on the expected
timeline
3. What's changed since the last review (new information, new
stakeholders, new objections)
4. One specific question or ask I should raise in the QSR to move
this deal forward — not a generic "let's discuss," a real,
pointed question
The fourth part is the one that matters most. A QSR where every deal gets a status update is a status meeting. A QSR where every deal surfaces one real question is a working session.
2. The qualification gap-finder
MEDDIC/MEDDPICC gets talked about constantly and applied inconsistently. This prompt forces an honest look at what’s actually been established versus assumed.
Here's what I know about this deal so far: [paste your notes]
Walk through this deal against these qualification criteria, and for
each one, tell me whether it's Confirmed, Assumed, or Unknown — don't
let me mark anything Confirmed unless my notes actually show evidence
for it:
- Budget: is there a real, sized number?
- Economic buyer / exec alignment: has an actual decision-maker
engaged, or only their team?
- Quantified business pain: has the cost of the problem been stated
in real terms (dollars, time, risk), or only described
qualitatively?
- Decision process: do I know the actual steps and timeline to a
signed deal, or am I guessing?
- Decision criteria: do I know what they're actually evaluating us
against?
- Champion: is there someone internally advocating for us, and have
I verified they have real influence?
- Competition: do I know who else is in this deal, or am I assuming
we're the only option?
This is the prompt most likely to surprise you — it’s very easy to feel like a deal is well-qualified because you’ve talked to the customer a lot, without ever having pinned down half of these concretely.
3. The champion health check
Champions are the highest-leverage relationship in any deal, and also the easiest thing to quietly lose track of.
Here's what I know about our champion(s) on this deal: [paste
whatever you know — role, how engaged they've been, any signals
about their standing internally]
Answer honestly:
- Is there more than one person on the customer side who could
credibly advocate for us internally, or are we relying on just
one person?
- What's the actual evidence this person has real internal
influence (not just enthusiasm) — have they gotten others
involved, secured budget conversations, or made intros?
- What's the risk if this specific person left the company or
changed roles tomorrow — would the deal survive that?
- What's one thing I could do before the next touchpoint to
deepen this relationship or start building a second one?
That third question is the one that’s easy to skip and expensive to ignore. A lot of deals that quietly stall trace back to exactly this — all the internal advocacy sitting with one person who’s no longer positioned to provide it.
Using these well
None of these prompts are trying to replace your own judgment — they’re trying to force a level of specificity that’s easy to skip when you’re moving fast across a full pipeline. The output is a starting point for the QSR conversation, not a replacement for it. Bring the sharp question these surface into the room, and you’re not just reporting on a deal — you’re actively shaping where it goes next.