Sales Pipelines

What a sales pipeline is

A sales pipeline is the route a lead takes from first enquiry to a decision, written as a list of stages. Different things you sell often move differently: a product order may close in two steps, a service contract in six. Giving each its own pipeline keeps their leads, stages and reports apart.

Every business starts with one pipeline called Sales Pipeline. You can edit it and add more.

• Every stage is one of four kinds, shown by its colour: Open, Deal Done, Lost or Not Serviceable. A lead at an Open stage is still being worked. The other three close it.

Create a pipeline

Open Sales CRM & Leads › All Pipelines, click the arrow beside Add New and choose New Sales Pipeline. The Create New Pipeline panel opens, already filled with the six starting stages.

1. 1Give it a Pipeline Name, and a Description if you want one. The description shows on the card of the pipeline.
2. 2Type over a Stage Name to rename a stage, and drag the handle at the start of a row to change the order. Leads move through the stages in this order.
3. 3Set the Closure % of each open stage: how likely a lead at that stage is to become a deal, from 0 to 100.
4. 4If you wish, set a Stage Duration in hours or days: how long a lead is expected to stay at that stage.
5. 5Click Save Changes. The new pipeline appears as a card on All Pipelines.

Add, change and remove stages

1. 1Click Add New Stage. A new row is added at the end of the list and stays highlighted until you save.
2. 2Click the coloured dot on the new row to choose its kind: Open, Lost or Not Serviceable. A pipeline has only one Deal Done stage, so that kind is not offered.
3. 3To remove a stage, click its bin. If the bin is greyed out, hover over it to read why that stage cannot be deleted.

• The kind of a stage is chosen when the stage is added and cannot be changed afterwards. The starting stages keep the kind they came with.
• Closure % is fixed at 100 for the Deal Done stage and at 0 for Lost and Not Serviceable stages. Those stages have no duration.
• A pipeline can have up to 30 stages, and no two stages may share a name.

Set the reasons for each stage

Reasons say why a lead is at a stage: "Waiting for reply", "Chose competitor". Each stage has its own list, and your team ticks from it when they change the stage of a lead.

In the pipeline panel, click the page icon on the row of a stage (Edit Reasons). The Edit Stage Reasons panel opens.

1. 1Type over a reason to reword it, or click the bin beside it to remove it.
2. 2Add Reason adds an empty line for a new one.
3. 3Click Save Changes in this panel, then Save Changes on the pipeline itself. The reasons are stored when the pipeline is saved.

• Reasons can also be added, renamed and removed in the Change Lead Stage dialog on a lead, with Add New Reason. Those changes are saved straight away.
• A stage holds up to 30 reasons, and no two may read the same.
• The reasons ticked on a lead show in the Stage Reasons column of All Leads, where you can filter by them.

Change a pipeline later

• Delete Pipeline, in the ⋯ menu of a pipeline's card, removes a pipeline that has no leads in it, deleted ones included. A business always keeps at least one pipeline.
• Edit Pipeline on the card of a pipeline opens the same panel. Rename the pipeline, reorder its stages, add new ones or change the reasons, then click Save Changes.
• Renaming a stage renames it for every lead already standing there.
• To move a lead to another pipeline, use the pencil beside Lead Pipeline on the lead, or Change Pipeline in its row menu on All Leads. You choose the new pipeline and the stage the lead lands on.
• Leads Summary and the three sales reports look at one pipeline at a time, so each pipeline has its own figures.