Deals Lost Value
Total dollar value of opportunities closed-lost during the period — the opportunity-cost view on the pipeline motion. Useful for sizing the "what we missed" gap and prioritizing post-mortem efforts on the highest-value losses. Common pitfall: post-mortems on small lost deals waste time relative to insight; tier the post-mortem cadence by value (e.g. every loss above the 80th-percentile deal size gets a written debrief). Boards expect the largest 2–3 losses to be explained explicitly in commentary. — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)
No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.
Rogue ID: sales.closed_lost_value
Type: Currency
Domain: Sales
Definition
Total dollar value of opportunities closed-lost during the period — the opportunity-cost view on the pipeline motion. Useful for sizing the "what we missed" gap and prioritizing post-mortem efforts on the highest-value losses. Common pitfall: post-mortems on small lost deals waste time relative to insight; tier the post-mortem cadence by value (e.g. every loss above the 80th-percentile deal size gets a written debrief). Boards expect the largest 2–3 losses to be explained explicitly in commentary.
Formula
Closed-Lost Value = Σ (deal_value) across opportunities that transitioned to closed-lost in the period. Use the same value convention (TCV vs ACV) as Closed-Won Value for consistency.Why it matters
Quantifies the realized opportunity cost — useful for justifying packaging changes, ICP refinement, or product investment that would have closed specific tier-1 losses. Drives loss-reason prioritization.
How to interpret
Loss-Value / Won-Value (= loss share of total close events) — at steady state usually 30–60% depending on motion type (inbound-heavy motions have higher win rates and lower loss values; outbound motions have lower win rates and higher loss values). Spiking loss-value with stable won-value usually indicates competitive friction or pricing pressure on enterprise deals specifically.
Related KPIs
sales.closed_lost_countsales.closed_won_valuesales.win_ratesales.average_deal_sizesales.competitive_alerts
Source
I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.
Stage relevance
| Company stage | Priority |
|---|---|
| Series A | Recommended |
| Series B | Recommended |
| Series C+ | Recommended |
| Public | Recommended |
Suggested for stages: Series A, Series B, Series C+, Public.
Default owning functions
- Sales
Machine-readable
- This KPI as JSON:
/api/ontology/sales/closed_lost_value.json - All Sales KPIs:
/api/ontology/sales.json - Full catalog:
/api/ontology/index.json
Deals Lost
Count of opportunities that transitioned to closed-lost during the period — the volume side of pipeline disqualification. The other half of the win rate denominator; without tracking it explicitly you cannot compute or benchmark win rate. Common pitfall: stale "open" deals that should be marked lost are left open, inflating pipeline value while suppressing the lost count — a hygiene problem that compounds because next-period coverage looks fine while win rates silently degrade. Every CRM hygiene policy should specify a max-age before deals auto-flag for lost-or-update review. — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
Deals Won
Count of opportunities that reached closed-won status during the period — the volume side of the period's sales output. Paired with closed_won_value gives the period's average won-deal size, a critical mix-shift indicator. Common pitfall: counting opportunity stage transitions rather than discrete deal closes (re-opened deals inflate the count). Boards read the trend over 4+ quarters to detect motion-volume stability — sharp drops while pipeline holds usually mean late-stage conversion has broken. — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).