A sales pipeline is the ordered list of every open deal in your business, grouped by how close each one is to a signed order. This article answers what a pipeline is for and how to build one inside the platform. Once it exists, you can see at a glance how much work is in play, where deals are piling up and which salesperson owns each one, without asking anyone for an update.
What a pipeline actually tells you
A pipeline answers three questions a spreadsheet of names cannot. How many live opportunities do you have right now? Where in the buying journey are they? Which ones have not moved for longer than they should?
The answer to the third question is where revenue hides. A firm with flat turnover usually has enough enquiries. What it lacks is a view that shows a proposal sitting untouched for three weeks while the salesperson works on something newer.
On the platform, a pipeline lives in Opportunities. Each opportunity is a card linked to a contact, with a value, an owner, a stage and a status of open, won, lost or abandoned. Cards move left to right as the buyer progresses.
Before you start
- Agree who owns the pipeline design. One person decides; everyone else gives input.
- Write down the four to seven moments in your sales cycle that a buyer genuinely passes through.
- Decide what counts as a deal. A qualified conversation, not every newsletter sign-up.
- Have your existing open deals in one list, even if it is rough, with a contact, a value and a rough position.
- Make sure every salesperson who will own deals has a user in the account.
How to build a sales pipeline on the platform
- In the left sidebar, click Opportunities, then select Pipelines from the top navigation.
- Click Create new pipeline in the top-right corner of the Pipelines page.
- Enter a Pipeline Name that states the motion, such as new business or renewals, then click Save.
- Type a Stage Name for the first buying moment on your list.
- Click Add stage, name the next buying moment, and repeat until every moment on the list is there.
- Leave won and lost off your list: the platform adds those two stages to every pipeline automatically.
If you are starting with no list, no CRM and no records at all, the sales prospecting guide covers building the first lists that come before these steps.
How to create a sales pipeline that people actually use
Most pipelines fail on adoption rather than design. Salespeople keep their real list in their head or a notebook and update the system once a month, just before a review.
Three rules prevent that. First, the pipeline must save the salesperson time, so tasks, reminders and follow-up emails should hang off stage changes. Second, managers run every pipeline conversation from the board itself, never from a separate report. Third, a deal that is not on the board does not exist for commission or forecasting purposes.
Imagine six partners selling, each with their own spreadsheet. Consolidating into one pipeline might reveal 41 open opportunities worth an illustrative £1.9m, with 17 untouched for more than 30 days. Those 17 would become the managing partner's first review list: revive the live ones with a dated next step and close the rest.
What it replaces and what it costs you each week
A pipeline replaces the shared deals spreadsheet, the weekly round-the-table update meeting and the partner who keeps the forecast in their head. It also replaces guessing which marketing channel produces revenue, because each opportunity carries its source.
Keeping it accurate takes each salesperson around ten minutes a day, mostly moving cards and logging the outcome of calls. The manager needs about 45 minutes a week to review stalled deals. The weekly routine is covered in running the pipeline week to week.
The mistake most people make
They build stages that describe what the salesperson did rather than what the buyer decided. "Email sent" is an activity. "Buyer agreed to a scoping call" is progress. A pipeline full of activity stages always looks busy and forecasts badly.
Creating twelve stages on day one. Every extra stage is another decision a salesperson must make when updating a card, and updates slow down. Start with five and add one only when a real bottleneck needs its own column.
The detailed rules for writing stage definitions and exit criteria are in designing pipeline stages.
When not to use a pipeline
If you sell a low-value product where buyers purchase on the first visit, a pipeline adds friction. Transactions belong in Payments and repeat purchase belongs in email marketing. A pipeline earns its keep when a sale involves at least two conversations and some days or weeks between first contact and decision.
You also do not need separate pipelines for every salesperson. Use one pipeline per sales motion and filter by owner.
Troubleshooting
Cards pile up in the first stage. Your first stage is probably catching unqualified enquiries. Add a qualification step before an opportunity is created, or route raw enquiries to a lead list instead.
Values do not add up to what finance expects. Salespeople are entering list price or annual value inconsistently. Write one rule for deal value and put it in the field description.
Won deals still appear on the board. The status was not changed to won, only the stage. Add a final stage change that also sets the status, using a workflow.
Automations fire twice. Two workflows share the same stage-change trigger. Find every workflow that starts from that stage and merge them into one.
Frequently asked questions
How many pipelines should a company of 60 people have?
Usually one or two. One for new business and, if renewals or upsells involve real selling effort, one for existing clients. More than three tends to mean the stages are wrong rather than the motions being different.
How do I build a sales pipeline if my team works from email?
Start by creating an opportunity for every email thread that represents a live deal, and connect the inbox so replies appear in Conversations against the contact. Once the history sits next to the card, people stop needing to search their mailbox.
Should leads and opportunities live in the same place?
Not quite. Leads are contacts you have not yet qualified; opportunities are deals someone is actively working. Keep unqualified leads in Contacts with a tag and create the opportunity at the moment of qualification. The difference is explained further in how leads move into the pipeline.
Can the pipeline update itself?
Partly. Workflows can move a card when a meeting is booked, a form is submitted or an invoice is paid. Judgement calls, such as whether a buyer has agreed budget, still need a person.