Your CRM shows a healthy pipeline. Dozens of opportunities in play. Revenue projections look solid.
But zoom in, and one stage tells a different story: Proposal Sent.
It is the black hole of your pipeline. Deals go in, but too many never come out. They stall, they linger, they quietly die. Sales leaders think they are chasing new business, but in reality they are patching holes in a leaking bucket.
The worst part? Most organizations don’t measure proposal velocity. They treat “Proposal Sent” as progress, not a warning sign. Which means you are probably losing millions in revenue you don’t even realize is gone.
When a deal hits the proposal stage, momentum is everything. Buyers are engaged, reps are motivated, timing is aligned.
But the moment a proposal stalls, momentum evaporates.
Urgency fades. Buyers lose steam as days pass without follow-up.
Competitors strike. Faster responses from rival vendors steal attention and credibility.
Reps burn time. Instead of generating pipeline, sellers chase internal approvals or hunt for content.
¹ Deals stuck in the proposal stage for more than 21 days are 70% less likely to close (Forecastio, 2025).
That’s not just inefficiency. That’s a revenue leak.
The obvious cost is lost deals. The deeper cost is how stallouts distort your entire pipeline.
Forecast distortion. Stalled proposals inflate pipeline value, giving leadership false confidence.
Cycle bloat. Deals that should close this quarter slip into the next.
Rep productivity. Every stalled proposal consumes hours of admin time instead of creating new opportunities.
² According to Salesforce’s State of Sales Report 2023, sellers spend less than 30% of their time actually selling. Add in proposal stallouts, and you are paying six-figure salaries for reps to chase approvals instead of driving revenue.
Baseline scenario: 100 active opportunities, $50K average deal size, 25% win rate, 90-day cycle length.
Revenue Velocity = $1.39M per month.
Now add a 14-day stall at the proposal stage (cycle = 104 days).
Revenue Velocity = $1.20M per month.
That’s a 15% revenue loss from proposal drag alone.
Scale it:
Run these diagnostics against your CRM:
If two or more ring true, your pipeline is leaking revenue at scale.
Stallouts don’t happen because buyers aren’t serious. They happen because your process isn’t orchestrated.
Disconnected tools. CRM, pricing, content, and e-signature don’t talk to each other.
Manual approvals. Legal and finance review every deal, not just the exceptions.
Content chaos. Reps dig through decks instead of pulling from a single source of truth.
No velocity metric. You measure deal count, not proposal speed.
The result is proposals that stall — not because buyers say “no,” but because your system says “wait.”
High-performing teams plug the leak by treating proposal velocity as a revenue KPI.
Track proposal cycle time. Measure request → draft → client delivery. Set an SLA (5–7 days max). Report alongside win rate in every forecast.
Automate approvals. Trigger reviews only for large or complex deals. Pre-approve reusable language and lock it in the content hub.
Centralize content architecture. Replace scattered drives with a structured library. Tokenize case studies, disclaimers, and pricing tables.
Implement velocity KPIs. Add “Proposal Aging” to dashboards. Flag deals in red after 14 days.
Create accountability at stage level. Sales leaders review every stalled proposal weekly, and forecast weighting drops automatically as proposals age.
⁴ Gartner reports that companies using orchestrated workflow automation see 30% higher forecast accuracy and shorter cycle times (Process Automation Architecture, 2023).
Fixing stallouts compounds across the business.
More revenue per rep. Less time wasted means more selling hours.
Higher win rates. Buyers reward vendors who respond fastest.
Forecast accuracy. Boards stop being surprised by inflated pipelines.
Happier teams. Proposal managers escape the fire drill and reps stay focused on selling.
This isn’t incremental. It’s millions in hidden revenue reclaimed.
You don’t need a full overhaul to start. Run this three-step audit:
The results will be immediate: faster proposals, fewer stallouts, higher revenue velocity.
Your pipeline isn’t leaking because you lack leads. It’s leaking because your proposals move too slowly.
Until you measure and manage proposal velocity, “Proposal Sent” will remain the graveyard of your deals.
Stop treating proposals as paperwork. Start treating them as the revenue engine they are.
See how Talewind accelerates proposals from stallouts to sign-offs
¹ Forecastio. How To Calculate Win Rate in Just a Few Steps, 2025. Link