Best Practices

Follow these best practices to get the most out of your sales pipeline.

Keep stages simple

5-7 stages is ideal. Too many stages slow down your process and make it harder to track progress.

Example of a simple pipeline:

1. New Lead
2. Qualified
3. Proposal Sent
4. Negotiation
5. Won / Lost

Avoid creating stages for every minor step. Focus on meaningful milestones.

Update deals regularly

Move deals promptly to keep your pipeline accurate. Stale data leads to poor forecasting.

Daily habit: Spend 5 minutes reviewing your deals and updating stages.

After every call: Update the deal stage and add notes while the conversation is fresh.

Use deal values

Entering deal values helps you:

• Prioritize - Focus on high-value opportunities
• Forecast - Predict monthly/quarterly revenue
• Report - Track performance over time

Even rough estimates are better than no values.

Review rotting deals

Check deals with red (danger) indicators weekly. For each stale deal, decide:

• Follow up - Send a message or make a call
• Mark as lost - If the opportunity has passed
• Update notes - If waiting on something specific

Don't let deals rot indefinitely. It clutters your pipeline and skews your data.

Use multiple pipelines

Create separate pipelines for:

• Different products - Each product may have a different sales cycle
• Different services - Service sales often differ from product sales
• Different regions - Regional teams can manage their own pipelines

This keeps each pipeline focused and easier to manage.

Assign ownership

Every deal should have an owner. This ensures:

• Accountability - Someone is responsible for follow-up
• No duplicates - Multiple people don't contact the same lead
• Clear reporting - Track performance by team member

Use the assignment dropdown when creating or editing deals.

Track lost reasons

When closing a deal as lost, always add a reason. Common reasons:

• Price too high
• Chose competitor
• No budget
• Timing not right
• No response

Analyzing lost reasons helps you improve your sales process and messaging.

Review analytics weekly

Check your pipeline analytics weekly to spot:

• Bottlenecks - Stages where deals get stuck
• Low conversion - Stages with high drop-off rates
• Trends - Changes in deal flow over time

Use insights to adjust your process and coaching.