Sales pipeline

The sales pipeline pictures the future of the top line: each opportunity is classified by stage (qualified, proposal, negotiation, verbal) with an associated probability (e.g. 25%, 50%, 75%). The weighted value is the sum of all deals multiplied by their respective probability.

In professional services teams watch the pipeline coverage ratio: the ratio of weighted pipeline to new orders target. A 3x-5x coverage is considered healthy for models with 3-6 month sales cycles. A well-managed pipeline, integrated with the PSA, lets you anticipate staffing decisions and hiring investments to cover future demand.

A consulting pipeline needs to record the shape of the demand, not only its value. Which roles, how many, starting when: those fields are what allow the pipeline to be reconciled against the bench, and without them a forecast can only be argued about rather than acted on. Opportunities above a probability threshold can then reserve provisional capacity, which is how a firm spots the month where three probable projects want the same two seniors.

Every pipeline accumulates deals nobody has touched in months, kept because closing them feels like conceding a loss. They inflate the forecast and distort conversion rates. A rule that costs nothing to enforce fixes it: any deal with no recorded interaction in sixty days moves to review, and the owner either records the next concrete step with a date or the deal closes — kept for reactivation, not deleted.