How many proposals went unanswered for 14+ days?

Why unanswered proposals represent your biggest pipeline risk

A proposal is one of the most expensive steps in your sales process. By the time you have qualified the lead, run a discovery call, maybe done a demo, and then invested time writing a custom proposal, you have sunk 3-5 hours of sales effort into this deal. The prospect is interested enough to ask for pricing. And then silence.

The problem is not just that these deals might be lost. It is that they sit in your pipeline, inflating your forecast. Your CRM says you have $180,000 in pipeline. But $60,000 of that is proposals that have been sitting for 3 weeks with no response. Your real pipeline is $120,000, and your forecast is off by a third.

A simple rule: no deal should sit in “Proposal Sent” for more than 14 days without a follow-up. If it does, either the rep dropped the ball or the prospect went with someone else and did not tell you.

What stale proposals look like in your CRM

You are looking for deals that meet all three criteria:

• Deal stage is “Proposal Sent”(or whatever your equivalent stage is called, like “Quote Sent” or “Pricing Delivered”).
• Last activity date is more than 14 days ago. This means no calls, emails, meetings, or tasks have been logged since the proposal was sent.
• No next activity is scheduled. The rep has not set a follow-up task, call, or meeting. The deal is sitting with no planned next step.

How to find stale proposals in HubSpot (step by step)

1. 1
   Go to CRM → Deals

   Switch to the table view (not board view) so you can filter more easily.

2. 2
   Filter: Deal Stage is “Proposal Sent”

   This narrows your view to only deals at the proposal stage.

3. 3
   Add filter: Last Activity Date is more than 14 days ago

   In HubSpot, use the “is more than” operator (not “has not been updated”) to filter for deals where the Last Activity Date is more than 14 days ago. This correctly catches deals with stale activity.

4. 4
   Check for missing next steps

   Add “Next Activity Date” as a column. Any deal where this is empty has no follow-up planned. These are your highest-risk deals.

5. 5
   Check HubSpot quotes if applicable

   If you use HubSpot's built-in quotes tool, go to Sales → Quotes. Filter by status and look for quotes that were sent but never signed. The quote status will show “Pending signature” indefinitely if the prospect never responded.

6. 6
   Sum the pipeline value at risk

   Add the Deal Amount for all stale proposals. This is the revenue that is theoretically in your pipeline but realistically going cold.

What it takes to monitor proposal status every month

This filter should ideally be run weekly, not monthly. Proposals go stale fast. But sustaining the discipline requires:

• Running the CRM filter weekly and reviewing the stale list.
• Following up on or closing out each stale deal.
• Tracking the stale proposal rate as a percentage of total pipeline to see if the problem is improving.

The CRM filter is quick to run. The problem is that it requires someone to own the process and act on the results every week. Most sales managers do this during pipeline reviews, but the reviews themselves often slip.

Or catch stale proposals automatically, every month

Bottomline connects to your CRM and monitors every deal in the Proposal Sent stage. It flags proposals that have been sitting for 14+ days with no activity and calculates the total pipeline value at risk.

Instead of remembering to run CRM filters, you get a clear list of at-risk deals in your monthly report with the total pipeline value at stake. You can act on it immediately or see whether the pattern is getting better or worse over time.