Deal Aging and Stall Detection

A deal that has not moved stages in forty-five days is not a deal. It is a placeholder. The pipeline treats it as revenue potential. The model assigns it a probability. But the reality is that a stalled deal has a close rate that decays exponentially with time. A deal that exceeded its stage benchmark by 50% has a close rate 3x lower than one on track. At 2x the benchmark, the close rate drops by 5x. These are not approximations — they are measurable in any pipeline with sufficient history.

Stall detection identifies deals before they reach the point of no return. The signal is not just time in stage — it is the combination of time in stage and engagement decline. A deal that has been in evaluation for thirty days but had a meeting yesterday is different from one that has been in evaluation for thirty days with no engagement for two weeks. The stall detection algorithm uses both dimensions: temporal position relative to benchmark and engagement trajectory. When both signal stall, the deal is flagged. The intervention window is narrow. A stalled deal recovered in the first week after flagging has a 40% recovery rate. After two weeks, it drops to 12%.