Opportunity aging measures how long a deal has been open, counted either from creation or from the last time something meaningful changed on the record. Its job is to separate the opportunities that are moving slowly from the opportunities that stopped moving and were never closed out.
Two clocks, two different answers
Age since creation tells you how long a deal has existed. Age since the last meaningful change tells you whether anyone is still working it.
A deal created 200 days ago that advanced a stage last week is a long enterprise cycle behaving normally. A deal created 60 days ago with no change in 55 of them is abandoned. Track both, because the first number without the second flags every enterprise deal and catches none of the dead ones.
ORM defines meaningful activity as a change in stage, close date, or amount. Logged emails and meeting notes do not qualify, since a rep can produce activity without the deal advancing an inch.
The twelve-month rule and the curve behind it
ORM applies a twelve-month rule across most of its customer base: an opportunity open that long without progression is treated as dead. In practice, more than 10% of a typical customer's pipeline has gone untouched for twelve months and is still sitting in coverage reports.
Underneath the rule is a model rather than a convention. ORM groups each opportunity using machine learning and predicts a close-time curve for each group. Those curves run from 1 to 80 weeks, with most of the expected close volume landing before week 12, and very few groups carrying any expectation past 52 weeks. A deal sitting well beyond the curve for its group is not slow. It is finished.
What aging does to coverage math
Aged opportunities inflate pipeline coverage without contributing a dollar of expected revenue. A team reporting 3.5x coverage while carrying 15% aged pipeline is closer to 3.0x, and it is planning against value that will never convert. That is one reason a coverage ratio works poorly as a health check, an argument laid out in full in why the 3x pipeline coverage rule is wrong.
Build the report, then force the decision
An aging report is worthless without a disposition step. Band open opportunities by days since the last meaningful change, then require the owner to resolve everything past the threshold: advance it with a documented next step, move the close date with a stated reason, or close it lost.
Silence is itself the signal. The absence of any buyer response is the earliest indication a deal is gone. Closing those records on time also keeps period-level deal slippage readable, because losses get counted in the quarter they happened rather than the quarter someone finally cleaned the pipeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as meaningful activity on an aging opportunity?
ORM defines it as a change in stage, close date, or amount. Logged emails, meeting notes, and task completions do not qualify, because a rep can generate activity on a dead deal without the deal moving. Tying the aging clock to field changes rather than touches is what makes an aging report usable.
How long should an opportunity stay open before it is closed out?
ORM applies a twelve-month rule across most of its customer base, treating an opportunity open that long without progression as dead. The right threshold for a specific team depends on its cycle length by segment, so an enterprise motion tolerates a longer window than an SMB motion does.
What is the difference between opportunity aging and time-in-stage?
Aging measures the life of the whole record. Time-in-stage measures how long it has sat in its current step. A deal can look young overall while being frozen in one stage, and it can look old overall while moving through a genuinely long enterprise cycle, so both numbers are needed to read a pipeline correctly.
How much of a typical pipeline is aged out?
It varies by company, but ORM sees more than 10% of pipeline in a typical customer sitting untouched for twelve months. That share still counts toward coverage ratios and pipeline value until someone removes it, which is how coverage reports overstate the revenue actually available.
Put these metrics to work
ORM builds custom revenue forecast models that turn concepts like opportunity aging into prescriptive action for your team.
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