Overview
With a Sales Pipeline, you can track the progress of Sales Opportunities (Opps) for leads and clients in your sales process. A Pipeline also provides greater visibility into your sales process, and allows you to forecast future revenue. Learn how to create and set up Pipelines in this article.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Creating a Sales Pipeline
Note: To create a Sales Pipeline, you must belong to a Security Group with the Sales Pipeline > Administer > Sales Pipeline permission.
A Sales Pipeline consists of stages and closed-lost reasons. A stage is a location in the Pipeline that shows you how a Sales Opportunity (Opp) is performing. A closed-lost reason is a brief note that captures the “why” behind lost Opps. These insights can help you identify areas for improvement in your sales process.
To create a Pipeline:
- On the Settings > Sales Pipelines page, select the “New Pipeline” button.
- On the “Edit Pipeline” page, name your Pipeline and select its type and stage options.
- While not required, you can use the stage options to gain more insights into your sales process. See below for more on Win Probability and Stage Aging.
- Assign a Sales Team.
- You can assign only Teams that have the “Sales Pipelines” functionality enabled. Learn how to set up a Sales Team. Users on the Sales Team can create and manage Sales Opportunities in the Pipeline.
- Set up the pipeline stages.
- Every new Pipeline has default stages. You can customize them or replace them with your own.
- Set up Closed Lost Reasons.
- You can add as many reasons as you want, but you need at least one.
- Save.
- You’ve successfully created a Pipeline! When you’re ready for others to see and use it, change its status to “Active” and save again.
Now that you’ve created a Pipeline, you need to fill it with Sales Opportunities (Opps). If your Sales Team has access to an active Pipeline, make sure you also belong to a Security Group with the appropriate Opp permissions. This is necessary to create, edit, and delete Opps. See this article for everything else you need to work Opps in a Pipeline.
Enable Win Probability
This setting allows you to forecast Pipeline revenue on the Sales Dashboard’s Pipeline Forecast by Stage graph. Once enabled, set the Win Probability for each Pipeline stage.
The sum total of all the Pipeline stages does not need to equal 100 percent. For best practice, the win probability should reflect the level of confidence you feel for winning Sales Opportunities (Opps) in each stage.
Please note, there are additional settings and data you’ll need in place to fully utilize Pipeline forecasting. For more details:
Enable Stage Aging
This setting helps alert you to Opps that are going stale in your Pipeline. All you need to do is specify the number of working days for each stage.
If you enable this setting, a visual cue will display on Opps that sit in a stage for too long. You can see this visual cue on the Sales Pipelines Board, Sales Opportunities List, and Opp record itself.