You can track your deals through the various stages of your pipeline. These deal stages are different steps in your pipeline that show exactly where each lead is in your sales process and how likely they are to close as a customer.

You have a default sales pipeline with seven deal stages: New > Qualifying > Demo scheduled > Pending commitment > In negotiation > Won / Lost. But you don't have to stick to these! The deal stages in your pipeline should be tailored to your business industry and sales process. 

Good to know

• Won and Lost are default stages in every pipeline, they cannot be deleted.
• The number of stages is capped at 20. But, at least a minimum of 3 stages is mandatory (including Won and Lost).
• Each stage in a pipeline must have a unique name.

What deal stages should I use?

When creating your own deal stages, you need to start by clearly identifying:

• the different steps of your sales process,
• the sales activities that your sales reps will perform in each stage to move deals forward.

Then, you'll need to translate these into corresponding stages in your pipeline. Make sure you define your deal stages using clear labels, so there’s no ambiguity about whether someone has hit a particular deal stage or not.

For example, if your sales process involves sending contracts to your clients, you can have deal stages such as Contract drafted, Contract sent, Contract signed, etc. You could also want to have a more detailed process and include deal stages such as Call scheduled, Meeting Agreed, Demo done, Proposal sent, etc.

Finally, you can also decide to turn your pipeline into a weighted pipeline by specifying a win probability percentage for each stage based on how likely a deal is to close at a specific stage. This will help you forecast your estimated revenue for each deal stage.

Edit the deal stages of your pipeline

To edit the deal stages of a pipeline: 

1. Go to Deals > Settings > Deals and Pipelines settings > Manage your pipeline settings.
2. Click Edit next to a pipeline.
   
3. Under the Stages section, you can: 
   • Edit each deal stage name or win probability.
   • Add a new deal stage by clicking + Add a new stage.
   • Reorder the deal stages by dragging and dropping them.
   • Delete a deal stage by clicking the bin icon.
     
4. To save your changes, click Save.

All changes are reflected on your pipeline from the Deals page. 

⏩ What's next?

• Forecast your expected sales using a weighted pipeline
• Create and manage multiple pipelines

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.