A pipeline is a promise about what happens next. For most teams of two to twenty people, five stages are enough to keep that promise: lead, qualified, proposal, negotiation and won.

What each stage means

• Lead: someone has shown interest, but nobody has spoken to them yet.
• Qualified: you have spoken, they have a real problem and a budget, and you know who decides.
• Proposal: they have a written offer with a price on it.
• Negotiation: they have answered the offer and you are agreeing the details.
• Won: the contract is signed.

Each stage is defined by something the customer did, not by how the rep feels. That is the whole trick. A card moves when a fact changes, so two reps looking at the same deal put it in the same column.

Why more stages slow you down

Every extra stage is a decision a rep has to make before moving a card. Demo booked, demo held, follow-up sent and waiting on legal all sound useful, but they turn the board into a to-do list. Reps stop moving cards because they are not sure which column is right, and within a fortnight the board has drifted away from the truth.

Keep the activity on the card instead. Calls, e-mails and next steps live on the deal's timeline in Leadline, so the column only has to answer one question: how close is this to money?

If you need a meeting to agree where a deal sits, you have too many stages.

Setting it up

The Free plan gives you 1 pipeline for up to 2 seats, which is plenty for trying this out. Name the five stages, drag in your open deals and write one sentence under each stage that says what has to be true for a card to enter it. Put those sentences where the whole team can see them.

When to add a stage

Add one only when a step takes real time and happens on almost every deal, such as a security review for larger customers. If it happens on a handful of deals, it is a note on the card, not a stage.