Introduction
As a baseline, let’s say your sales team closed $2.1M last quarter. But, now, you need to forecast Q4. So you ask your reps: "What's in your pipeline?"
Three answers come back:
"I've got 40 opportunities worth $3.5M."
"Probably around $1.8M, but some of those are old."
"Let me check my dashboard."
Some of you might be thinking, I wouldn’t mind hitting numbers like that, but the real takeaway is how to get there. And, none of these answers tell you what you actually need to know: How much revenue will you actually close? When? And what's blocking the deals that should've closed last month?
That's not pipeline management. That's guesswork with a CRM login.
In this article we’ll walk through: how to manage your sales pipeline with the same rigor you'd apply to job costing or project schedules. You'll learn the velocity formula that predicts revenue, the forecasting methods that work for contractors, and the conversion benchmarks that separate healthy pipelines from bloated ones.
If you're a sales manager trying to hit quota without relying on hope and hustle, this is your blueprint.
Pipeline Velocity: The Formula That Predicts Revenue
Most sales managers focus on pipeline size. "We've got $5M in the pipeline!" sounds impressive. But size without understanding velocity is meaningless.
Big pipeline numbers look good on paper, but which deals will close this week? this month? Or even this quarter?
A $5M pipeline with a 120-day cycle and 20% win rate generates less revenue than a $2M pipeline with a 45-day cycle and 40% win rate.
Which is why instead of total pipeline, let’s shift our approach to pipeline velocity.
What is Sales Pipeline Velocity?
Pipeline velocity measures how fast sales moves through your pipeline and become revenue. It's the single most powerful metric for diagnosing pipeline health.
The Pipeline Velocity Formula is:
Pipeline Velocity = (Number of Deals × Average Deal Size × Win Rate) ÷ Average Sales Cycle Length
Let's break down each variable:
Number of Deals: How many opportunities are currently in your pipeline
Average Deal Size: The typical contract value
Win Rate: The percentage of qualified opportunities that become customers
Sales Cycle Length: Average days from first contact to closed deal
This formula is where the “rubber meets the road.” It measures real revenue generation per day rather than hopeful guesses.
Working Example of Pipeline Velocity from Commercial HVAC
Let's say you're a commercial HVAC company with these numbers:
Number of Deals: 60 active opportunities
Average Deal Size: $75,000
Win Rate: 35% (industry benchmark for qualified opps)
Sales Cycle Length: 75 days
Calculation:
Pipeline Velocity = (60 × $75,000 × 0.35) ÷ 75
Pipeline Velocity = $1,575,000 ÷ 75
Pipeline Velocity = $21,000 per day
That means your pipeline is generating $21K in revenue every single day. Multiply that by 90 days (one quarter) and you get $1.89M in projected revenue.
Why Pipeline Velocity Matters
Your velocity formula tells you exactly where your pipeline is healthy and where it's broken. If your velocity is dropping month-over-month, something changed. Maybe your team dropped the ball on prospecting and you're not adding enough deals. Maybe your win rate declined. Maybe your sales cycle length increased.
The beauty of the formula is that it shows you which lever to pull to get your quarter back on track.
Which is where we need to have a deeper understanding of the levers in a sales cycle.
The Four Levers to Improve Sales Velocity
You have four ways to increase pipeline velocity:
Increase deal count: Add more qualified opportunities to the top of the funnel. This means better prospecting, more outbound activity, or stronger lead generation. If you're running 60 deals and need to hit $2.5M, you either need 80 deals—or you improve one of the other three levers.
Increase deal size: Target bigger accounts or upsell existing opportunities. If your average deal is $75K but your ideal customer profile should be $100K, you're leaving money on the table. Tighten your targeting.
Increase win rate: Improve qualification, discovery, and proposal quality. If you're closing 35% of qualified opps but the benchmark is 40%, your process has gaps. Fix qualification first—it's usually the weakest link.
Decrease cycle time: Tighten handoffs, speed up decision-making, eliminate bottlenecks. If your proposals sit for 20 days before you follow up, you're stretching the cycle unnecessarily. Every extra day in the pipeline reduces velocity.
Most teams try to fix all four at once. But this leads to chaos for your sales team.
I watched this play out in 2021 when the company I was working for at the time hired a new sales manager from another industry. He walked in with big plans: compress our 180-day sales cycle down to 30 days, increase the price of all our service agreements by 40%, and push the team to prospect twice as hard while "tightening qualification standards."
On paper, it sounded aggressive but logical. In reality, it was a disaster.
The team panicked. Reps didn't know which lever to pull first, so they pulled all of them - badly. Prospects who needed six months to evaluate got pressured into 30-day timelines and walked. Price increases weren't positioned properly, so qualified opportunities stalled in negotiation. And the "better qualification" turned into reps disqualifying everything that didn't fit an impossible profile.
The result? Our pipeline dropped from $9.4M to just over $3.2M in one quarter. Revenue cratered. Within 6 months half the sales team quit or got laid off. The manager lasted 9 months.
The lesson: velocity improves when you fix one thing at a time. Pick the lever that's most broken—usually it's qualification or cycle time—and focus there for 60-90 days. Let the team master that change. Then move to the next.
Trying to optimize everything at once doesn't make you faster. It confuses the team and makes sales chaotic.
Pipeline Stages & Conversion Benchmarks
Your pipeline needs clearly defined stages that reflect how deals actually move. Not generic labels like "Opportunity"- specific stages that mean something to your team. Reasons to begin one stage and exit another.
Here's the structure that works for commercial contractors:
Stage 1: Prospecting: You've identified a target but haven't made contact yet. The deal moves forward once you initiate outreach. About 20–30% of prospects move to the next stage, and this typically takes 1–5 days.
Stage 2: Contacted: You've sent initial outreach and received a response. The deal advances when a discovery call is scheduled. Expect 25–35% of contacted prospects to book a meeting, usually within 5–10 days.
Stage 3: Discovery Scheduled: The meeting is booked. Once the discovery call is completed, the deal moves forward. Around 70–80% of scheduled meetings result in a completed discovery, typically within 7–14 days.
Stage 4: Qualified: You've confirmed BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and verified this is a real opportunity. The deal advances when the prospect requests or agrees to a proposal. Expect 80–90% of qualified deals to reach the proposal stage within 7–14 days.
Stage 5: Proposal Sent: You've delivered the quote and scheduled a follow-up. The deal moves forward once the proposal is reviewed and objections are surfaced. About 50–60% of proposals advance to negotiation, typically within 10–20 days.
Stage 6: Negotiation: You're actively discussing terms, pricing, and timeline. The deal advances once you get verbal commitment or address the final objection. Around 60–70% of negotiations result in a closed deal, usually within 14–30 days.
Stage 7: Closed-Won: The contract is signed and the deal is handed off to operations.
Stage 8: Closed-Lost: The deal is dead. Document the loss reason so you can learn from it and improve your process.
Was the lead qualified correctly? Were all the signals there? Was the loss a result of price? Timelines? What was the reason for the loss? These factors are key to understanding your sales team’s performance and how to coach them in the future - they also inform your pipeline metrics.
How to Use These Benchmarks to Increase Pipeline Velocity
If your conversion rates are lower than the benchmarks, identify the weakest stage. That's where your process is broken.
Example: Let's say you're tracking your conversion rates and notice that only 50% of your "Qualified" deals are advancing to the Proposal stage. That's a problem - because the benchmark says 80–90% of truly qualified deals should move forward to proposal.
What's happening? You're probably calling deals "Qualified" before they actually are. Maybe your reps are skipping the hard questions in discovery. Maybe they're not confirming budget, or they're assuming the person they're talking to has decision-making authority when they don't. Or maybe there's no real timeline - the prospect is just kicking tires.
When deals that aren't truly qualified get pushed into your pipeline, they clog everything up. Your forecast looks healthy on paper, but in reality, half those deals were never going to close. Your reps waste time writing proposals for prospects who can't buy, and your pipeline velocity drops because deals sit in limbo.
The fix isn't to add more deals at the top of the funnel. That just makes the problem worse. The fix is to tighten your qualification process.
Teach your reps to confirm BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) before marking anything "Qualified." If a prospect can't answer those four questions clearly, the deal stays in Discovery - it doesn't advance.
In short, identify the broken stage first, fix the broken stage, then move onto the next. Don't just feed more deals into a funnel that's leaking. That’s the fastest way to burn out your team and miss quarterly goals.
Time-in-Stage Red Flags
Another metric to play close attention to is “time-in-stage.” Time in stage is how long it takes for a deal to move from one stage to another.
For example: when a deal sits in “contacted” for more than two weeks with no reply, it’s probably dead (unless the property manager is on vacation or away on leave). These are huge red-flags for a sales leader.
Now, these are general metrics and won’t include fringe cases but any deal that exceeds these thresholds needs immediate attention:
Contacted for more than 20 days → Disqualify or re-engage
Discovery Scheduled for more than 30 days → Meeting didn't happen or deal isn't real
Proposal Sent for more than 30 days → Ghosted or stalled; call it what it is - dead.
Negotiation for more than 60 days → Price objection unresolved or decision-maker missing from the conversation.
Don't let stale deals sit. Mark them Closed-Lost and document why. Your forecast depends on it.
The Exit Criterion Rule
Each stage needs a clear exit criteria: what has to happen before a deal moves forward? If you can't define it, the stage is meaningless.
For example, a deal doesn't move from Contacted to Discovery Scheduled just because the rep "had a good conversation." It moves when a meeting is booked on the calendar with a confirmed date, time, and attendee list.
I know this will sound like “beating a dead horse” but, if they can’t prove it met the exit criteria, it shouldn’t leave the stage.
Vague stage definitions create pipeline chaos and inaccurate predictions. Clear exit criteria create accountability and predictable growth.
The 3 Forecasting Methods That Work
You've calculated your pipeline velocity. You've mapped out your stages and identified where deals are advancing or dying. Now comes the question every sales leader needs to answer:
"How much revenue will we actually close, and when?"
That's where forecasting comes in.
Once you've tightened up your exit criteria and identified which levers to pull to accelerate the pipeline, accurate forecasting becomes significantly easier. You're no longer guessing - you're predicting based on real conversion data and actual pipeline behavior.
Forecasting is how you turn your pipeline from a list of “maybes” into a reliable revenue projection. There are three methods that actually work - and one you should never use.
Method 1: Stage-Based Forecast
How it works: Assign a probability to each pipeline stage. Multiply deal value by probability. Sum the weighted values.
Example:
Qualified (30%): 10 deals × $50K × 0.30 = $150K
Proposal (50%): 8 deals × $60K × 0.50 = $240K
Negotiation (70%): 5 deals × $80K × 0.70 = $280K
Total weighted forecast: $670K
Accuracy: 60–70%
Why it works: Based on historical conversion rates, not opinions.
Limitation: Assumes all deals in the same stage have the same probability. A 90-day-old proposal isn't the same as a 10-day-old one.
When to use it: Start here if you're new to forecasting. It's simple and works with basic CRM data.
Method 2: Velocity-Based Forecast
How it works: Use the pipeline velocity formula. Multiply daily revenue generation by the number of days in your forecast period.
Example:
Pipeline velocity: $21K/day
Forecast period: 90 days
Forecast: $21K × 90 = $1.89M
Accuracy: 70–80%
Why it works: Accounts for all four variables (deal count, size, win rate, cycle time). More sophisticated than stage-based.
Limitation: Assumes your pipeline stays consistent. If you stop adding deals or your win rate drops, the forecast breaks.
When to use it: Upgrade to this once you have 90 days of historical conversion rates and cycle times.
Method 3: Cohort-Based Forecast
How it works: Track deals by the month they entered the pipeline. Measure how long it takes each cohort to close.
Example:
January cohort: 60 deals entered, 21 closed (35% win rate), avg 72 days to close
February cohort: 55 deals entered, 18 closed (33%), avg 68 days
March cohort: 50 deals entered, in progress
Use the historical cohort data to predict how many deals from March will close and when.
Accuracy: 80–90%
Why it's the best: Based on actual behavior, not assumptions. Adjusts for seasonality and changing conditions.
Limitation: Requires at least 6 months of clean pipeline data to build reliable cohorts.
When to use it: Move to this when you've got a year of data and need the most accurate forecast possible.
The Method You Should Never Use to Forecast: Gut Feelings
Sales reps are optimists by nature. They want every deal to close. That's what makes them good at their job—but it's also what makes their forecasts unreliable.
Asking each rep "What do you think you'll close this quarter?" and adding up their answers might work if you have one or two seasoned veterans who've been with you for years. But it's not scalable as your team grows, and even then, you're only hitting 30–50% accuracy at best.
Here's what's really happening: reps aren't being dishonest or lazy. They're being human. No one wants to admit at the beginning of the quarter that their pipeline is thin or that half their deals are stalled. They don't want to scramble to rebuild their pipeline at the 11th hour when the forecast falls short. So they overestimate their close rates, underestimate how long deals will take, and convince themselves that "this one's going to close soon."
The result? Your forecast is fiction.
Never forecast with gut feel. Use data.
Key Metrics: Your Pipeline Dashboard
Your pipeline dashboard should answer these questions at a glance:
What's in the pipeline? (deal count, total value, stage distribution)
What's moving? (velocity, conversion rates, time in stage)
What's stuck? (stalled deals, aged opportunities, bottlenecks)
What can we count on? (weighted forecast, probability-adjusted revenue)
Here’s what to track to answer those questions:
Total Pipeline Value: This shows the size of all your open opportunities combined. Your healthy target: 3–5× your quarterly quota. If your quota is $1M, your total pipeline should be between $3M and $5M.
Weighted Pipeline Value: This is your probability-adjusted forecast, meaning you've multiplied each deal's value by its likelihood of closing. Healthy target: 1.5–2x your quarterly quota. This is the number you can actually count on.
Number of Opportunities: Track your deal count by stage. You want a balanced distribution across stages - not everything stuck in one place. If 80% of your deals are in "Contacted" and nothing's moving to "Qualified," your pipeline is clogged.
Average Deal Size: This tells you the typical contract value. Healthy target: trending up over time, or at minimum staying stable. If your average deal size is shrinking, you're either targeting smaller accounts or discounting too much.
Pipeline Velocity: Your daily revenue generation (the formula from Section 1). Healthy target: increasing quarter-over-quarter. If velocity is flat or declining, something in your process broke.
Stage-to-Stage Conversion Rate: This shows where deals advance and where they die. Your target: match the benchmarks from Section 2. If your Qualified → Proposal rate is 50% when it should be 80–90%, fix qualification.
Overall Win Rate: The percentage of qualified opportunities that close. Healthy target for commercial contractors: 30–40%. If you're closing less than 25%, your qualification process is broken or your pricing is off.
Average Sales Cycle Length: Days from first contact to signed contract. For HVAC, roofing, and solar companies, the healthy target is 60–90 days. If your cycle is stretching beyond 120 days, you're losing deals to indecision or your process has bottlenecks.
New Deals Added (Weekly): This tells you if your pipeline is being fed consistently. Healthy target: 10–20 new opportunities per rep per week. If this number drops, your prospecting efforts are lagging and your pipeline will dry up in 60–90 days.
Pipeline Coverage Ratio: Your pipeline size divided by your quota. Minimum healthy target: 3:1. Example: if your quarterly quota is $1M, you need at least $3M in your pipeline. Anything less and you're at risk of missing your number.
Track these ten metrics weekly, and you'll know exactly where your pipeline is healthy and where it's breaking—before it costs you the quarter.
Red Flag Metrics
These indicate immediate problems:
Pipeline shrinking month-over-month → Not enough prospecting
Average deal age over 90 days → Pipeline full of dead deals
Weighted forecast under quota → You're not going to hit your number
Win rate under 25% → Qualification is broken or pricing is off
If you see any of these, stop everything and fix the root cause.
Where Modern Tools Make the Difference
Most CRMs can track these metrics - but only if your data is accurate and up-to-date. That's the real challenge.
If your pipeline is full of outdated contact info, stale deals that should've been closed months ago, or opportunities that were never truly qualified in the first place, your dashboard becomes meaningless. Garbage in, garbage out.
This is where property intelligence platforms like Convex become a game-changer for pipeline management. Instead of relying on your reps to manually research prospects, update deal stages, and guess which leads are actually ready to buy, tools like Signals and Engage do the heavy lifting:
Signals tracks intent data: so you know which prospects are actively researching solutions right now, not six months from now
Auto-scoring prioritizes your pipeline: your team focuses on high-intent deals first, not cold leads that go nowhere
Real-time CRM enrichment: contact data, property attributes, and buying signals sync automatically, so your dashboard stays clean without manual data entry
Permit history/ Building data
The result? Your dashboard reflects reality, not guesswork. Your velocity metrics are accurate. And your forecast is something you can actually trust because it’s based on data not gut-feeling.
Pipeline Problems & How to Fix Them
Just like frozen pipes in a house, which look fine until they burst, your sales pipeline can crack under pressure. Even the most well-documented process will struggle to account for fringe cases, and eventually, you'll find the leak.
Here's where pipelines break most often - and how to fix them before they mess up your forecast.
Problem 1: The Pipeline Is Bloated with Dead Deals
What it looks like: 200 opportunities in the CRM. Half of them haven't been touched in 60+ days. Your weighted forecast says $5M, but you know you're not closing $5M.
The fix: Start by implementing a 90-day rule. Any deal with no activity in 90 days gets automatically marked Closed-Lost. No exceptions. Run a weekly report of aged deals and force reps to update or close them.
Once your team is fully up to speed on how pipeline velocity works in practice, you can shorten this to 30 days with a few exceptions.
Pipeline hygiene isn't optional. Dead deals inflate your forecast and hide the truth - they also destroy team morale. I can say from experience there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to close a dead deal the last week of the quarter just hoping you’ll meet your quota.
Learned that lesson early in my career the hard way.
Problem 2: Deals Get Stuck in Proposal
What it looks like: Proposals go out, but nothing comes back. Reps follow up with "Just checking in…" emails. Deals age out.
The fix: Teach your team to never send a proposal without scheduling the follow-up call first. Before you send it, confirm: "If this proposal checks all the boxes, are you ready to move forward, or is there someone else who needs to approve?"
If the prospect can't commit to a follow-up call, they're not ready for a proposal and should be moved back to the discovery stage.
Problem 3: Win Rate Is Plummeting
What it looks like: You used to close 35% of qualified opps. Now you're at 22%. Revenue is down. Pipeline is still full.
The fix: Pull the last 20 Closed-Lost deals. Read the loss reasons. Interview the reps. Find the pattern.
If it's qualification, tighten BANT. If it's pricing, test discount strategies or reposition value. If it's competition, adjust your differentiators.
Don't guess. Diagnose.
Your pipeline is like a patient, and you’re the doctor asking questions to help diagnose the problem.
Problem 4: Pipeline Velocity Is Dropping
What it looks like: You're adding deals, but revenue isn't growing. Deals are closing, but slower than before.
The fix: Measure time-in-stage for the last 30 closed deals vs. the previous 30. Where did the slowdown happen?
If it's in Discovery → Qualified, your qualification process is dragging. If it's in Proposal → Negotiation, buyers are stalling on pricing, value, or another aspect of the proposal.
Fix the slowest stage first. Don't try to speed up everything at once.
Problem 5: Reps Aren't Updating the CRM
What it looks like: Deals in the CRM are inaccurate. Stage doesn't reflect reality. Notes are empty. Your forecast is fiction.
Before we get to “the fix” I want to note that we’ve all seen deals that just don’t fit the mold. Maybe it's the multi-location commercial manufacturing group that wants all of their HVAC units installed in a certain time-frame to meet production requirements and they’re considering a competitor if your install team can’t deliver, maybe it’s a hospital trying to replace a system that’s failed due to emergency outages.
These are fringe cases that require adjustments, and they can be great “quick wins,” but they shouldn’t define your team’s actions on a daily basis.
The fix: Make CRM hygiene non-negotiable. In weekly pipeline reviews, call out reps whose deals are outdated. Tie CRM accuracy to comp or quota credit. If a deal isn't in the CRM, it doesn't count toward quota.
Enforcement isn't micromanagement. It's accountability.
How to Build a More Predictable Sales Pipeline
So, we’ve hit some heavy subjects. You've got the framework. Here's how to implement it without disrupting your team's current progress.
Step 1: Audit Your Pipeline
Export all open deals. How many are active? How many are stale? What's the average age?
Close any deal older than 90 days with no activity. Mark them Closed-Lost and document why.
Step 2: Define Your Stages
Use the 6-stage framework from Section 2 or customize based on your actual sales process. Each stage needs a clear exit criterion.
Step 3: Set Stage Probabilities
Pull the last 100 closed deals. Calculate conversion rates between stages. Assign probabilities.
Example: If 60 out of 100 Qualified deals became Proposals, your Qualified stage probability is 60%.
Step 4: Build Your Dashboard
Set up reports for: total pipeline value, weighted forecast, conversion rates, time-in-stage, and velocity.
Track these weekly. Share them with your team.
Step 5: Run Weekly Pipeline Reviews
Every Monday, review: what moved, what closed, what's stuck, what's aging.
Coach reps on what to move forward, what to close, and what to disqualify.
Fix one stage at a time. Don't try to optimize everything at once.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Sales pipeline management isn't about filling your CRM with opportunities. It's about tracking what moves, what's stuck, and what you can count on.
The difference between teams that hit quota and teams that miss? Visibility, velocity, and ruthless hygiene.
If you're a sales manager building or fixing your pipeline management system, start here:
Audit your pipeline and close dead deals
Define your stages and set conversion benchmarks
Build a dashboard that tracks velocity, weighted forecast, and time-in-stage
Run weekly pipeline reviews and enforce CRM hygiene
Optimize one stage at a time
Want to see how property intelligence and intent signals can keep your pipeline full of high-quality, high-intent deals?
Schedule a demo to see Convex in action. We'll show you how Convex’s commercial services sales platform helps sales teams generate more qualified leads and close deals faster.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you manage a sales pipeline?
Managing a sales pipeline means tracking every deal from first contact to close, monitoring conversion rates between stages, measuring time-in-stage, and using weighted forecasts to predict revenue. Build a dashboard that shows total pipeline value, weighted forecast, velocity, and bottlenecks. Run weekly pipeline reviews to identify stalled deals and coach your team on what to move, what to close, and what to disqualify.
What is pipeline velocity?
Pipeline velocity measures how fast revenue moves through your pipeline. The formula is: (Number of Deals × Average Deal Size × Win Rate) ÷ Average Sales Cycle Length. The result is your daily revenue generation. For example, if you have 60 deals, an average deal size of $75K, a 35% win rate, and a 75-day sales cycle, your velocity is $21,000 per day—or $1.89M per quarter.
How to forecast sales revenue?
There are three forecasting methods:
Stage-Based (assign probabilities to each stage and weight deal values—60–70% accurate),
Velocity-Based (use the pipeline velocity formula to predict daily revenue—70–80% accurate),
Cohort-Based (track deals by entry month and measure close rates—80–90% accurate). Start with stage-based, upgrade to velocity-based, and move to cohort-based as your data matures. Never use gut feel forecasting.
What are good pipeline conversion rates?
For commercial contractors and service providers, healthy conversion rates typically look like this:
Contacted → Discovery: 25–35%
Discovery → Qualified: 40–60%
Qualified → Proposal: 80–90%
Proposal → Negotiation: 50–60%
Negotiation → Closed-Won: 60–70%
Overall win rate from qualified opportunity to closed deal should be 30–40%.
These benchmarks are adapted from B2B sales research and Convex's internal data working with commercial HVAC, roofing, solar, and janitorial companies. Your actual rates may vary based on your market, average deal size, sales cycle length, and qualification process.
If your rates are lower, identify the weakest stage and fix that process first—don't just add more deals to a broken funnel.
Sources: MarketJoy B2B Sales Pipeline Conversion RatesUltimate Guide to Funnel Conversion Benchmarks for B2B SalesSalesforce Sales Conversion Rate Analytics
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