Pipeline stage best practices
How to pick stages that match how you actually sell, not how you wish you sold.
4 min read Updated 2026-04-24
Good stages map to observable customer behaviour, not internal team activities. "Demo booked" is a behaviour (their calendar has your appointment); "reviewing internally" is an assumption.
Rules of thumb
- Six stages or fewer. Seven starts to feel bloated.
- Each stage is a verb in past tense (Contacted, Qualified, Proposed, Won).
- Every move forward is a one-way door — no "went back a stage" patterns.
- Don’t model your workflow; model the customer’s.
- Stale deals have an age, not a stage — use age filters instead of "Stalled" stages.