A leaking sales pipeline is the most common reason a B2B business misses targets. Not a lack of leads. Not a bad product. The deals that should close do not.
Pipelines leak in predictable places. Worth knowing where.
Leak one: qualification
A rep is told to keep the pipeline full. They keep prospects in “interested” who should be in “disqualified”. The pipeline looks healthy. The forecast is wrong. Three months later, those deals all “go quiet” at the same time. Fix: an honest pipeline review weekly with brutal qualification rules.
Leak two: between demo and proposal
The prospect liked the demo, said “send me something” and disappeared. Usually because the demo did not surface their actual problem, just the rep’s pre-prepared product story. Fix: stop leading with the demo. Ask what the prospect’s last attempt to solve this looked like and what went wrong.
Leak three: at proposal
The proposal goes in. Silence. Often the proposal is too long, too formal and arrives without context. The decision maker did not commission it directly. Fix: shorter proposals, sent with a 90-second video walking through the relevant page. Conversion goes up.
Leak four: procurement
The deal is “won” but stuck in legal review or budget approval. Fix: get a procurement contact in the conversation by week three. Earlier than feels comfortable.
These are not subtle. They show up in pipeline data if anyone is reading it. Most teams are not, because the dashboard is busy and nobody owns the meta-question of “where are we losing deals”.
If you want help reading your own pipeline data honestly, let’s have a conversation.