What Is a Sales Pipeline? Stages, Examples and a Template

Plenty of deals aren't lost to a competitor. They're lost to a follow-up nobody sent.

A sales pipeline is the set of stages a deal moves through, from the first real conversation to won or lost, with every open deal sitting in exactly one stage. Each deal carries a value, an owner and a next step, so at a glance you can see what's likely to close, what's stuck, and what to do today.

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is a stage-by-stage view of every sale you're actively working on. Each deal moves right only when something real happens: a demo is held, a proposal is sent, terms are agreed. It ends in two places, won or lost.

Three things make it useful. Every deal has a value, so the stages add up to money; an owner, so nobody assumes someone else is following up; and a next step with a date, so a deal that hasn't moved is easy to spot.

A spreadsheet works for a handful of deals. Past ten or so, deals go stale unnoticed, which is why most teams move to a CRM with a pipeline board.

What are the stages of a sales pipeline?

Four to six open sales pipeline stages plus Won and Lost is enough for most small teams. Here's a set for teams that sell with calls or demos, with exit criteria:

Two rules keep the stages honest. Define each stage by something the buyer did: "They asked for a proposal" is a stage; "looks promising" is not. And record a reason every time a deal is lost; after twenty lost deals, the reasons show patterns in your pricing and positioning.

Self-serve products need fewer stages, since most customers never talk to anyone. A short pipeline for larger accounts that want a conversation (Conversation, Quote sent, Won, Lost) is often enough.

What comes before the pipeline: leads, MQLs and SQLs

Not every contact belongs in a pipeline. Someone who downloaded a guide is a lead, not a deal; putting them on the board inflates your numbers. The usual sequence before a deal exists:

1. Subscriber: gets your emails, no buying interest yet.

2. Lead: showed interest, like starting a trial or downloading a guide.

3. MQL (marketing qualified lead): a good fit and engaged enough to hand to sales.

4. SQL (sales qualified lead): someone has talked to them and confirmed they could buy.

5. Opportunity: there's a live deal, and it enters the pipeline.

These lifecycle stages describe the person; a pipeline stage describes one sale. Most contacts never have a deal, and one customer can have several at once, like a renewal and an expansion.

Sales pipeline vs sales funnel: what's the difference?

A sales funnel shows what share of people make it from one step to the next. A sales pipeline shows the individual deals in progress, what each is worth, and what happens next.

You need both: the funnel shows whether marketing produces enough qualified people, the pipeline whether sales turns them into revenue.

Sales pipeline example: a two-person SaaS with 15 open deals

The numbers are illustrative, but the math is what you'd run on your own board. A two-person B2B SaaS sells a plan worth $6,000 a year. It has 15 open deals, and from past deals it knows roughly how often a deal at each stage ends up won.

Weighted pipeline: $27,600. Multiply each deal's value by its stage's chance of winning and add them up. It's a far better forecast than the $90,000 headline, which assumes everything closes.

Pipeline coverage: 3x. If the goal is $30,000 of new annual revenue this quarter, $90,000 of open pipeline is three times the target. A common rule of thumb is to keep at least 3x, because most open deals won't close.

Pipeline velocity: $400 a day. Velocity is open deals × win rate × average deal size ÷ average days to close. With a 20% historical win rate (won deals as a share of all deals created) and a 45-day sales cycle, that's 15 × 0.20 × $6,000 ÷ 45 = $400 of revenue a day moving through the pipeline. Raise any of the top three numbers or shorten the cycle, and velocity goes up.

Set your stage percentages from your own history once you have 20 or 30 closed deals. Until then, rough guesses are fine.

These are the sales pipeline metrics worth tracking.

• Open deals per stage. A pile-up shows where deals get stuck.

• Average deal size. Discounting shows up here first.

• Win rate. Won deals divided by all closed deals (won plus lost), over the last quarter.

• Sales cycle length. Average days from deal created to won.

• Stale deals. Open deals with no activity for two weeks or more: the first number to check when a month disappoints.

How to build a sales pipeline in an afternoon

1. Pick your stages. Start with four to six, defined by buyer actions, plus Won and Lost.

2. Write the exit criteria. One line per stage: what has to happen to move a deal on.

3. Load your current deals. Every live conversation becomes a deal with a value, an owner, an expected close date and a next step.

4. Set a stale rule. Decide how many days without activity counts as stuck. Fourteen is a sensible default.

5. Review it weekly. Fifteen minutes: anything stale, anything without a next step, anything past its close date.

The fourth step is the easiest to skip and the one that saves deals. A deal rarely dies with a "no"; it dies when Tuesday's follow-up slips to next month.

Where small-team pipelines break, and how to keep yours moving

In a small team, two gaps lose more deals than anything else we see. The first is the handoff from marketing to sales: a lead fills in a demo form, gets an automated thank-you, and nobody calls for four days. In Spreeflo, a form submission can start a journey that sets the contact's lifecycle stage (with Update Contact Attribute), assigns an owner with Assign owner, and opens a deal with Create deal. Lead scoring gives every contact a Fit and an Intent score, and My queue lists new leads highest Intent first. Scoring on website visits, and sharing leads between several sellers, are on the Professional plan.

The second is the deal that quietly stops moving. Spreeflo's deals board flags any open deal with no activity for 14 days (changeable per pipeline or stage) as Stale, puts it in the owner's queue and creates a follow-up task.

See it in Spreeflo: the Deals board shows each stage's total value, and Convert turns a lead into a deal in one step, setting their stage, company and owner, with an optional "Send proposal" task. Click around a live pipeline in the tour →

Sales pipeline template

Copy this into your CRM or a spreadsheet and adjust the stages to how you sell.

PIPELINE: New business

Stages (in order)
1. Discovery       exit: buyer agrees to a demo or proposal
2. Demo held       exit: buyer asks for pricing or a proposal
3. Proposal sent   exit: buyer returns questions or terms
4. Negotiation     exit: signed (Won) or declined (Lost)
5. Won
6. Lost            required: lost reason

Every deal has
- Name
- Value (annual)
- Owner
- Expected close date
- Next step + due date
- Primary contact and company

Rules
- A deal with no activity for 14 days is stale
- Every Lost deal gets a reason
- Weekly review: stale deals, deals without a next step, deals past close date

Build this in Spreeflo

Spreeflo gives founder-led teams a sales pipeline on the same contact record as their email, forms and web activity, with no second tool to buy or sync. The CRM is included on every paid plan: Starter from $16 a month for one seller, Professional from $24 for a team.

Take the live tour → · See pricing

Common questions

What is the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?

A funnel shows the share of people who move from one step to the next, like visitor to lead to customer. A pipeline shows the individual deals you're working on, each with a value, a stage and a next step. The funnel diagnoses marketing; the pipeline runs sales day to day.

How many stages should a sales pipeline have?

Four to six open stages plus Won and Lost. Fewer than three hides where deals stall; more than eight usually means stages describe your process instead of the buyer's progress.

What is pipeline coverage in sales?

Pipeline coverage is your open pipeline value divided by your sales target for the period. If you need $30,000 this quarter and have $90,000 in open deals, coverage is 3x. Keep at least 3x, because most open deals won't close.

What is another term for a sales pipeline?

People also call it a deal pipeline, an opportunity pipeline or deal flow. "Sales funnel" is often used loosely for it too, though strictly a funnel tracks conversion rates across people, not individual deals.

How is a sales pipeline used in a CRM?

Usually as a board: each deal is a card in its stage's column, linked to the contact and company, with a value, an owner, an expected close date and a next step. Moving the card moves the deal, the board totals each stage's value, and the CRM can flag deals that have gone quiet.

Read these next

• Getting started with the Spreeflo CRM

• Lead scoring in Spreeflo

• Lead routing and speed-to-lead SLAs (Professional)

• Email marketing for small business: the five automations to set up first