Glossary
Sales Pipeline
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where each prospective deal sits in the buying process, organized as a sequence of stages from initial lead to closed sale. It lets sales teams track active opportunities, estimate future revenue, and identify where deals are stalling or progressing.
Last updated June 2026
What are the typical stages of a sales pipeline?
Pipeline stages reflect the steps a buyer takes toward a purchase, and they vary by business. A common B2B sequence is: lead or prospecting, qualification, meeting or discovery, proposal, negotiation, and closed-won or closed-lost. Each stage has clear entry and exit criteria so reps know what must happen before a deal advances. Well-defined stages make the pipeline consistent across the team, so two reps would categorize the same deal the same way. This consistency is what makes pipeline data trustworthy enough to forecast from and to coach against.
How is pipeline management different from forecasting?
Pipeline management is the day-to-day work of keeping deals moving: advancing opportunities through stages, removing stalled deals, logging next steps, and prioritizing where reps spend time. Forecasting is the predictive layer on top of it: estimating how much revenue will close in a given period. Forecasts typically weight each open deal by its value and its probability of closing, often derived from the stage it sits in. Clean pipeline hygiene, with accurate stages, amounts, and close dates, is what makes a forecast reliable rather than wishful.
How does a CRM support the sales pipeline?
A CRM is where most teams build and run their pipeline. It stores each deal with its stage, value, owner, and expected close date, and renders the pipeline as a board or list so reps can drag deals forward and managers can spot bottlenecks. CRMs also automate reminders, calculate weighted forecasts, and report on conversion rates between stages. Orphica, for example, pairs a configurable pipeline and forecasting view with built-in AI-visibility tooling, so teams can connect demand generation to the deals it produces.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sales pipeline?+
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where every active deal sits in the buying process, organized as stages from lead to close. It helps sales teams track opportunities, prioritize work, and forecast the revenue likely to close in a given period.
What is the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?+
A pipeline is rep-facing and tracks individual deals through concrete sales actions like qualification, proposal, and negotiation. A funnel is broader and describes aggregate buyer behavior, showing how the volume of prospects narrows from awareness to purchase. The pipeline is what a salesperson manages; the funnel is how marketing and leadership view conversion at scale.
How do you measure the health of a sales pipeline?+
Common health metrics include total pipeline value, pipeline coverage (open pipeline divided by the revenue target), stage-to-stage conversion rates, average deal size, sales cycle length, and the age of deals in each stage. Together these reveal whether there is enough qualified opportunity to hit quota and where deals tend to stall.
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