Pipeline math
Your weekly number of sales conversations equals your quarterly revenue goal divided by deal size, close rate and proposal rate, then divided by 13 weeks.
Agency Sales Playbook uses this formula from Tim Kilroy's 2026 planning workshop because revenue does not come from leads. It comes from a small number of real conversations with people who have a short path to yes or no. The formula replaces a vibe with a number you can hit each week.
Last updated: · Published by Tim Kilroy
Enter your own numbers. If you do not know your close and proposal rates, run the 90-day leak test first.
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Procedure
Example with round numbers: a $150,000 goal and $25,000 deals means 6 deals. At a 30% close rate that is 20 proposals. At a 40% proposal rate that is 50 conversations, or about 3.9 per week.
Definition
In the Agency Sales Playbook approach, pipeline math is a diagnostic, not a target to grind toward. Once the numbers are on the page, pick one constraint to fix this quarter: not enough conversations, conversations not turning into proposals, or proposals not closing. Improve one at a time. Raising your close rate from 30% to 40% in the example above cuts proposals needed from 20 to 15, which often matters more than finding more leads.
Usually the one with the biggest drop in your leak test. If conversations rarely become proposals, look at discovery. If proposals rarely close, look at follow-up and positioning. If you simply do not have enough conversations, that is a demand problem, and it is worth knowing before you hire a salesperson.
For context on the top of the funnel, Salesgenie reports an average cold call connect rate of roughly 2% to 3%, so outbound alone needs large volume to fill a weekly conversation target.
Work backward from revenue. Divide your quarterly revenue goal by average deal size to get deals needed, divide by your close rate to get proposals, divide by your proposal rate to get conversations, then divide by 13 weeks. The pipeline math page on this site has a calculator that does this with your own numbers.
See this answer in the full FAQRun a leak test. Pull the last 90 days, count how many prospects entered each of the five stages (Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed, Closed), and calculate the conversion from each stage to the next. The stage with the biggest drop is your leak. It takes about twenty minutes and a spreadsheet, and it beats buying more leads.
See this answer in the full FAQA useful five-step view for agencies is the funnel itself: Aware, Interested, Qualified, Proposed and Closed. Each stage only counts when the prospect has done something observable, such as naming the problem in their own words or opening the proposal. Counting the prospect’s actions rather than your own activity is what makes a five-step funnel useful for finding leaks.
See this answer in the full FAQUsually because the buyer cannot see the specific outcome you create, so the only thing left to compare is the rate. A price objection is often a positioning problem in disguise. Shift discovery and proposals toward the outcome, raise the floor on who you take, and be willing to walk from deals that anchor you low.
See this answer in the full FAQReferrals are valuable but they do not scale on demand; you cannot decide to get more of them this month. Tim Kilroy cites the RSW/US 2025 Agency Survey, where 75 percent of agencies named referrals their top new-business source and 93 percent said their growth engine was not strong enough. A written process lets you add other channels without losing what works.
See this answer in the full FAQPublished by Tim Kilroy
