You've qualified the deal. Your prospect seems engaged. You've sent the proposal. Then... crickets. The deal sits in your pipeline for months, and you're not sure why.
Sound familiar? According to Marcus Chan, the problem is not about your sales skills, but your pipeline framework. Most sales teams use qualification frameworks like BANT and MEDDIC to determine if a deal is real. But these frameworks focus on whether your reps should pursue the deal, not on whether your buyers can actually buy.
In this article, we will analyze Marcus Chan's buyer-centric ADVANCED framework that mirrors how deals actually progress through a buyer's decision-making journey. This approach helps you identify exactly where deals get stuck and what you need to do to move them forward.
Traditional pipeline frameworks like BANT and MEDDIC are excellent qualification tools. They help your reps determine if a prospect has budget, authority, need, and timeline. But here's what they don't tell you: whether your buyer can actually navigate their internal buying process.
Marcus Chan points out a critical disconnect: "Your reps reach 'proposal stage'... then deals stall for months." Why does this happen? Because your pipeline stages reflect your sales process, not your buyer's decision-making journey.
Think about it. Your CRM might show stages like "Discovery," "Demo," "Proposal," and "Negotiation." These stages track what you're doing, not what your buyer needs to accomplish internally to move forward. The result? Your reps can't effectively guide prospects through their internal buying process because they don't understand what hurdles the buyer still needs to clear.
Marcus Chan developed the ADVANCED framework to solve this exact problem. Instead of tracking your sales activities, it maps the eight critical stages that buyers must progress through to make a purchase decision:
Each stage represents a real milestone in your buyer's journey. Let's walk through what each stage means and how to know when you've truly achieved it.
The first stage seems obvious, but this is where many deals go wrong from the start. Does your prospect genuinely acknowledge they have a problem you can solve?
This isn't about surface-level interest. Marcus emphasizes that statements like "This looks interesting" or "We should explore this" don't qualify as problem acknowledgment. These are polite ways of saying "maybe."
Real problem acknowledgment sounds different. You need to hear things like "We have a real business problem" or "This is causing us pain." The prospect must recognize that their current situation is problematic enough to warrant change.
Without this foundation, everything that follows is built on sand. You might get meetings, you might get interest, but you won't get a deal.
Once your prospect acknowledges the problem verbally, the next question is: are they willing to put it in writing?
Documentation separates real opportunities from tire-kickers. If the problem is serious enough, your prospect will create:
Why does this matter? Because documentation means the prospect is investing real time and political capital into solving this problem. They're creating a paper trail that other stakeholders can review. They're making their commitment visible to their organization.
If your prospect won't document the issue, they probably don't see it as urgent enough to solve. And if it's not urgent for them, it shouldn't be taking up space in your pipeline.
Here's where Marcus sees most sales reps fool themselves. Individual acknowledgment isn't enough—you need team alignment.
Have you identified and aligned at least three core stakeholders? This should include:
Marcus shares a critical insight: "Most people miss this step and fool themselves into thinking they have a real opportunity." You might have one enthusiastic champion, but if the rest of their team isn't aligned, your deal will stall.
This is what we call "single-threading"—when you're only connected to one person in the organization. It's one of the most common failure points in complex B2B sales. If your champion leaves, gets reassigned, or simply loses an internal political battle, your deal dies with them.
Team validation is great, but teams don't sign checks. You need executive sponsorship from someone who:
Without executive authorization, deals stall in committee discussions and political roadblocks. Everyone might agree the problem exists and your solution works, but without someone at the top saying "This is a priority, and here's the budget," nothing moves forward.
This is also a moment of truth for many sales reps. If you can't get access to an executive sponsor, you might not have a real deal. And trying to involve executives too late in the process—after you've already invested months in lower-level conversations—is a common failure point Marcus identified.
Even with executive sponsorship, you face another potential roadblock: internal solutions.
Has your prospect ruled out building it themselves? Until they determine that they can't build it internally, that their current team lacks the capability, and that they must seek outside help, you're competing against "do nothing" and internal resources.
This stage is particularly relevant for technology solutions where prospects might consider developing something in-house. No matter how good your solution is, if the prospect thinks they can handle it internally, you're not moving forward.
This is a major milestone. Your prospect has decided that your solution best fits their needs, and any remaining steps are validation, not selection.
Notice what Marcus says here: "You're no longer competing on features—you're just confirming the decision they've already made." This is why he assigns a 70% close probability to this stage. The decision is essentially made; you just need to help them validate it internally and handle the logistics.
Many sales reps confuse earlier stages with this one. They think they're the chosen vendor because they're getting positive feedback, but they're actually still being compared to alternatives. Real "chosen vendor" status means your prospect is actively defending their choice to others in their organization.
With vendor selection made, it's time to get concrete about implementation. You need a clear roadmap with:
This isn't just about setting a close date for your forecast. It's about your buyer establishing internal milestones for rollout, training, and adoption. If your prospect can't or won't commit to a timeline, they're not truly ready to move forward.
At this point, you're handling paperwork:
Marcus assigns a 90% close probability here because you're past the decision-making phases. Of course, deals can still fall apart in legal review or procurement, but if you've truly completed stages 1-7, this final stage is mostly administrative.
Now that you understand the framework, let's talk about where deals most commonly fail.
According to Marcus, this is the most common failure point. Sales reps build relationships without uncovering real pain. They get "happy ears" from mild interest and mistake politeness for genuine acknowledgment of a problem.
These reps might spend months nurturing a relationship, only to find that when it comes time to actually commit, the prospect doesn't see the problem as urgent enough to solve. All that time invested, and there was never a real opportunity to begin with.
The second major failure point is single-threading. Reps work with only one or two people and skip the economic buyer entirely. Then the deal stalls for months because those one or two people can't actually make a decision without buy-in from others.
Marcus emphasizes this because it's so easy to fool yourself here. You have regular meetings, you're making progress on requirements, your champion is engaged—but without broader stakeholder alignment, you're stuck.
Ready to transform your pipeline? Here's how Marcus recommends implementing the ADVANCED framework:
Map your current deals to these eight stages. Go through your pipeline right now and honestly assess where each deal really is. Not where you want them to be, but where they actually are according to these buyer-centric milestones.
Identify where deals are really stuck. You'll likely find patterns. Maybe most of your deals are stuck at Stage 3 because your reps aren't multi-threading. Or perhaps they're stalling at Stage 5 because prospects keep considering internal alternatives.
Train reps on deep discovery to establish pain. If deals are failing at Stage 1, your team needs better discovery skills. They need to learn how to uncover genuine pain points, not just surface-level interest.
Coach multi-threading with all key stakeholders. If Stage 3 is your failure point, focus on teaching your reps how to identify and engage multiple stakeholders early in the sales process. This means getting comfortable asking "Who else needs to be involved in this decision?"
Leverage AI to analyze deal progression. Tools like SellMeThisPen AI can help your reps practice the conversations they need to have at each stage. They can roleplay discovery calls, practice multi-threading techniques, and get feedback on their approach before they're on a real call with a prospect.
Update CRM stages to match buyer journey. Consider restructuring your pipeline stages to reflect the ADVANCED framework. This helps everyone—from reps to sales leadership—understand where deals really are.
Focus pipeline reviews on buyer progression. Instead of asking "Did you send the proposal?" start asking "Have they documented the problem?" or "Do you have executive authorization?" These buyer-centric questions reveal the true health of your deals.
In this episode of SellMeThisPen Podcast, Michael and Marcus dive deep into why traditional pipeline frameworks fail and how the buyer-focused ADVANCED framework helps sales teams guide prospects through their actual decision-making journey. Marcus shares real examples of where deals commonly stall and provides actionable strategies for helping your buyers buy.
Marcus Chan is the CEO and Founder at Venli, a LinkedIn Top Voice, Salesforce Top Sales Influencer, and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Six-Figure Sales Secrets." With 14 years as a corporate sales leader, Marcus was promoted 12 times in 8 years and now helps sales professionals and teams level up their game through practical, buyer-focused strategies.
