Template
Deal stage templates
8 stage sets for the business models we work with, plus the rule that separates a stage definition that survives contact with a real pipeline from one that does not: every stage is something the buyer did, not something you did.
The rule: stages are buyer actions
The most common defect in a pipeline is stages named after seller activity. Proposal sent, followed up, demo booked. Every one of those can be true while the buyer has done nothing at all, so a deal can travel most of the pipeline on your effort alone and then vanish.
Write each stage as something the buyer did that you could point to. They shared a budget. They introduced you to the person who signs. They sent it to legal. Defined that way, a stage change is evidence rather than optimism, and the forecast starts describing something.
8 stage sets by business model
Agency new business
- Enquiry
- Chemistry call
- Brief received
- Pitch or proposal
- Negotiation
- Won
- Lost
The brief is the stage that matters. A pitch with no written brief is a conversation with a deadline.
Consulting engagement
- Introduction
- Problem framing
- Scoping
- Proposal
- Approval
- Won
- Lost
Approval is separate from proposal because it is somebody else calendar, and that is where consulting deals actually sit.
Software project or outsourcing
- Qualified
- Discovery
- Technical validation
- Commercials
- Contract and legal
- Won
- Lost
Legal is its own stage because it takes weeks and nothing you do speeds it up. Hiding it inside the last stage makes every forecast late.
SaaS sales-led
- Qualified
- Demo
- Evaluation
- Business case
- Procurement
- Won
- Lost
Business case is a buyer action: they have to write something internally. If nobody is writing it, the deal is at demo.
SaaS product-led expansion
- Signal
- Contacted
- Value conversation
- Proposal
- Expanded
- No expansion
Runs separately from new business. Mixing self-serve expansion into a new logo pipeline ruins both numbers.
Retainer and renewal
- In term
- Renewal window
- Renewal conversation
- Agreed
- Renewed
- Lapsed
Every retainer sits in a stage all year, which is the point: renewal window opening should be visible months out.
Referral and partner sourced
- Introduction offered
- Introduction made
- First conversation
- Scoping
- Proposal
- Won
- Lost
The first two stages exist because an offered introduction that never gets made is the most common silent loss in a referral business.
Simple three-stage
- Talking
- Deciding
- Won or lost
For a team that has closed fewer than twenty deals. You do not know your stages yet, and guessing them makes people avoid the sheet.
Five ways this goes wrong
- Stages named after your own activity. Proposal sent, followed up, demo done. All of them can happen while the buyer does nothing, so the pipeline fills with deals that will never close.
- A stage for "waiting". Every stage is waiting. A stage called that is a place deals go to avoid being closed out, and it grows forever.
- Too many stages, too early. An eight-stage pipeline designed before twenty deals have closed describes a guess. Nobody keeps it current, and the detail is fiction anyway.
- No stage for legal or procurement. It takes weeks and you cannot speed it up. Hidden inside the last stage, it makes every forecast late by exactly that long.
- One pipeline for new business and renewals. Renewals have a date and an expected outcome. Mixed together with new business, neither number means anything.
Changing stages later
Renaming a stage breaks every report that spans the change, and merging two loses the distinction in the history. So batch the edits: work out the whole new set, change it at a period boundary, and write down what the old stages mapped to. Doing it one stage at a time over six months produces a pipeline whose history nobody can read.
Before changing anything, check whether the problem is really the stages. Most complaints about a pipeline are complaints about deals that should have been closed out months ago, and no stage set fixes that.