Where deals actually go quiet
Every team we look at believes its pipeline leaks at the end. Almost none of them do. Here is where the revenue really goes.
30 August 2026 · By Adam Kassem
Ask a sales team where they lose deals and they will tell you about pricing. Ask their calendar and it tells you something else entirely.
The gap nobody measures
The stall is almost never at the close. It sits between the good first call and the thing that was supposed to happen next — a proposal that took nine days to send, a follow-up that waited on one person, a question that needed an answer from engineering.
None of that shows up in a stage. A deal in "proposal" for three weeks and a deal in "proposal" for three days look identical in every report anybody runs.
What to look at instead
- Time in stage, not count in stage.
- The gap between the last inbound message and the next outbound one.
- How many open deals have no next action with a date on them.
If the next step is not written down with a date, there is no next step.
Why it persists
Because it is nobody's fault, and therefore nobody's job. The rep is busy, the manager sees a healthy-looking board, and the deal is technically still open. It stays open until it is not.
The fix is unglamorous:
- Make the wait visible in the same place the deals are.
- Give every open deal a dated next action, no exceptions.
- Review the ones that have gone quiet, weekly, by name.
Nothing there needs new software. It needs the pipeline to answer a question it currently cannot.
If your board looks healthy and the number does not, this is usually why — and it is worth half an hour to find out.
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