IT services deals wait in legal, security review and procurement far longer than in sales. Give those steps stages, owners and dates. From ₹899/user/month.
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Quick answer
Opportunities live in a founder's inbox, a proposal folder and a spreadsheet that reflects last month. Estimates are built in isolation, and once a statement of work goes out the deal effectively disappears from view.
The cost is a bench. A firm that expects four starts in April and gets one has hired or held people for revenue that was still sitting in a vendor onboarding queue nobody was chasing.
Seven stages carry it: lead, discovery call, solution and estimate, statement of work issued, technical evaluation, legal and procurement, signed and resourced. The sixth is the one most firms leave out and the one that takes longest.
Record the engagement model too. Time and materials, fixed bid and dedicated team carry different risks and different margins, and a pipeline that treats them identically will mislead both the sales and the delivery conversation.
Discovery ends when the requirement, budget band and procurement path are recorded. That last one matters most, because a deal without a known procurement path has an unknown timeline however keen the engineering contact sounds.
Technical evaluation ends with a documented verdict against criteria agreed in advance. A proof of concept without written success criteria cannot fail cleanly, so it drifts instead, consuming engineering time nobody costed.
The timings below suit mid-sized engagements with established companies. Startup clients move faster and skip most of the procurement stage, while regulated enterprises extend it considerably.
| Stage | What it means | Exit criteria (evidence) | Typical time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | Enquiry, referral or outbound reply | Contact reached, need noted | 1 to 3 days |
| Discovery call | Requirement and context understood | Requirement, budget and buying path recorded | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Solution and estimate | Approach and effort priced | Internally reviewed estimate on the deal | 1 to 3 weeks |
| SOW issued | Scope and commercials proposed | Statement of work acknowledged | 1 to 4 weeks |
| Technical evaluation | POC or architecture review | Verdict recorded against agreed criteria | 2 to 8 weeks |
| Legal and procurement | Agreement and vendor onboarding | Master agreement and onboarding complete | 2 to 12 weeks |
Filtered, not read aloud. Deals ageing in legal or procurement with a named contact and a chase date. Evaluations against their criteria and end dates. Statements of work with no response. Then start months against bench.
One extra question earns its place: which deals are being driven only by an engineering champion with no budget authority? Those are the ones that feel healthy for two months and then disappear without a clear reason.
Pipeline by expected start month against bench and hiring plans, which connects sales to profitability. Stage ageing on legal and procurement, where deals silently expire. And win rate by source and deal size, which usually favours referrals and extensions.
A pipeline exposes a discipline problem rather than solving it. If nobody records the procurement path, no report can explain why deals take four months. Start by making discovery capture budget and buying process, and let the rest follow.
This is not project management, resource planning or time tracking, and it does not know your bench. It manages opportunities, evaluations, approvals and handover into delivery, alongside whatever the delivery organisation already runs.
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Deals sit for weeks in legal or vendor onboarding and everyone assumes somebody else is chasing them.
Legal and procurement is a named stage with ageing and an owner, so a deal parked in a security review queue produces a task rather than silence.Legal and procurement stage
Proofs of concept end without a clear verdict, and the team cannot say whether it passed or the client simply lost interest.
Success criteria are agreed and recorded before the evaluation begins, so the outcome is a decision rather than a fading conversation.POC success criteria
Bench planning and sales run on different numbers, so the firm is either idle or scrambling to hire.
Every opportunity carries an expected start month and an engagement model, so delivery and sales plan against the same dates.Start month and bench view
The forecast is built on technical enthusiasm from an engineering contact who cannot approve spending.
Decision-makers are mapped on the deal across engineering, procurement and finance, so a stage only advances when the person who signs is involved.Decision-maker mapping
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