Pipelines and stages: set up how you sell

A pipeline is the path a deal takes — for example Lead In → Contact Made → Demo Scheduled → Proposal Made → Negotiation → Closed Won / Closed Lost. You can have several, for different products or kinds of sale.

See how a pipeline performs

Sales → Pipelines shows each pipeline with its Open Deals, Total Value and Weighted Value. Open one for:

• Stage Conversion Rates — how many deals get through each stage;
• Pipeline Velocity — Average Time to Close, Median Time to Close, Fastest and Slowest;
• Stage Performance — per stage, its deals, average value and average days spent;
• 6-Month Revenue Forecast — per month, the deals expected to close, their total and weighted value.

The numbers count the deals you can see: Who sees which records.

Set up pipelines

Setting up pipelines is for managers. Open Settings → Pipeline setup → Pipelines.

1. Click Create Pipeline, or Edit an existing one.
2. Pipeline Information:
   • Pipeline Name (required) and Description;
   • Deals go quiet after (days) — an open deal with nothing done and nothing planned for this many days shows under Deals gone quiet on its owner's dashboard. 14 unless you change it; from 1 to 365;
   • Set as default pipeline — new deals and the board start here;
   • Active — an inactive pipeline is not offered for new deals and not on the board.
3. Pipeline Stages — at least two, in order. For each: Stage Name, Color, Probability %, and Won or Lost for the closing stages. Add Stage adds one; the bin removes one.
4. Click Create Pipeline or Update Pipeline.

Keep one Won and one Lost stage in every pipeline: Mark as Won and Mark as Lost move a deal there.

When you remove a stage that has deals, its deals move to the first stage of the pipeline.

Delete a pipeline

In Settings → Pipeline setup → Pipelines, ⋯ → Delete on the pipeline. A pipeline can be deleted only when no deals are in it, and never the last one: move its deals to another pipeline first (Edit on each deal), or make it inactive instead.

Reasons for losing

Settings → Pipeline setup → Reasons holds two lists:

• Lost deals — offered when a deal is marked lost;
• Disqualified leads — offered when a lead is disqualified.

For each list:

• New reason adds one, up to 30 per list;
• the pencil renames one — the deals that already carry it keep it, and the report shows the new wording;
• Offered turns a reason off and on — a hidden one is not offered any more but stays on the records that have it;
• drag a reason to change its order;
• the bin deletes a reason of your own that nothing uses. The reasons marked Base can be hidden, not deleted.

If something doesn't work

Cannot delete pipeline with existing deals. Please move or delete deals first.

Move the pipeline's deals to another pipeline, then delete it.

Cannot delete the last pipeline. At least one pipeline is required.

Create another pipeline first.

Keep at least one reason in the list — picking one is mandatory.

A deal cannot be marked lost, nor a lead disqualified, without a reason, so one reason must stay offered.

The base reasons can be hidden, not deleted.

Turn Offered off instead.