Before You Dive In
This article is one step from our Master Help Guide: All About Pipelines. We recommend starting with the visual walkthrough video and examples inside the Master Help Guide before diving into the technical setup below.
Each Master Help Guide acts as your project plan – teaching you the feature, laying out the steps in the right order, and linking to every resource you’ll need along the way.
This guide is perfect if you want to:
Understand how pipeline stages work
Determine how many pipelines to build, based on your needs
Plan out your pipeline journey or flow
Understanding Pipeline Journeys
Click here for the written breakdown
Click here for the written breakdown
Start with your entire customer journey in mind: Take some time to holistically consider your entire business and all of its processes. When you're ready to build your first pipeline, consider how many you truly need. You can create separate pipelines for different parts of the customer journey (e.g., a sales pipeline, an onboarding pipeline, an offboarding pipeline etc) OR combine them into one longer pipeline. We typically recommend breaking them up so each pipeline has one very specific goal (e.g. close the sale, onboard the client, offboard the client).
Start with qualified leads: Avoid overwhelming your sales pipeline by adding every potential lead. Instead, add people who show genuine interest (e.g., submitted an application form, booked a call, or reached out with intent).
Define clear stages: Each stage represents a step in the journey. You can choose any stages that you like, according to your unique business processes. Map out the journey you want leads or clients to follow. Be specific and logical about each step. It's best to speak in past tense and only move people to the stage when they've actually completed it.
For a sales pipeline, stages might include:Interested in Services
Cancelled Sales Call
Booked Sales Call
Attended Sales Call
Requested Proposal
Proposal Sent
Invoice Sent
Invoice Paid (Won)
Track actions and notes: Use the opportunity cards inside your pipeline to keep all information in one place. Add notes, schedule follow-ups, and track conversations to stay organized. Set aside dedicated time each day or week to tend to your pipeline, and move opportunities along towards the goal.
Differentiate lost vs. abandoned leads: There are 4 different statuses for every opportunity, that you can change inside the dropdown of each opportunity or by dragging the opportunity card towards the bottom of the screen and placing it into the correct status. It's up to you and your unique needs as to how you want to define each status, but here's our personal recommendation:
Won: They achieved the end-goal of your pipeline e.g. if you win a sale in a sales pipeline, you would mark it as "Won".
Note: By default, opportunities look like they "disappear" from your pipeline board when marked as won, but they haven't. Simply adjust the filter on your pipeline to show all opportunities, because by default it only shows what is in the 'Open' status.
Lost: Leads that made it to key stages (e.g. received a proposal in your sales pipeline) but rejected it and did not convert. This could be considered "Lost" as you did genuinely lose the sale.
Abandoned: Leads that dropped off early (e.g. no response after initial contact, or didn't even make it to the proposal stage), or leads that you want to disqualify because they are not a good fit. In this case, we suggest marking them as "Abandoned" as opposed to "Lost" so you can get more accurate reporting.
You can use pipelines manually, or automate them: You can manually move opportunities through the stages OR you can set up workflows to automate the process. We strongly suggest starting with manual pipelines, and only adding automation once you've perfected your process.
Next Steps
If you’ve completed the steps above, head back to the Master Help Guide on Pipelines to move onto the next phase.
Each Master Help Guide acts as your project plan - teaching you the feature, laying out the steps in the right order, and linking to every resource you’ll need along the way.
Need Help?
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Walk you through any of the steps
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