Sales pipeline
A sales pipeline is the list of all open deals at a given moment, with their stage, expected value and next step.
What it looks like
The funnel describes the past: how many people moved through each stage over a period. The pipeline is a snapshot of now. It answers a simple question: what deals are in progress today, how much are they worth and where is each one stuck.
A typical view is a board or a table: columns for stages, cards for deals. Each card has a client, an amount, an owner and a next action with a date. Summing the cards gives the pipeline value. Weighting them by stage gives a rough idea of what may close.
Why it matters
A healthy pipeline is the best early signal of next month’s revenue. If it thins out today, the drop in payments arrives weeks later, when it is too late to react. Reviewing it weekly lets a head of sales see stalled deals, overloaded reps and gaps in lead flow before they hit the numbers.
It also shows workload. Two reps with the same results may carry very different pipelines: one is about to run dry, the other is drowning.
Typical mistake
Letting dead deals sit in the pipeline. Reps keep them because an empty column looks bad, and the total value turns into fiction. The forecast built on it then fails.
The other trap is deals with no next step. A card without a dated action is not in progress. It is waiting to be forgotten.
What to do
Set a rule: every open deal has an owner, an amount, a stage and a dated next step. Deals with no movement for a set period are either revived or closed as lost with a reason. Review the pipeline on a fixed day, by rep and by stage.
More in Signals
- A sales director who can’t see each rep: why the CRM lies and pipeline meetings go nowhereA sales director loses sight of each rep because the CRM is filled in by hand and after the fact, while the real work happens in messaging apps outside the system. Decisions end up based on gut feeling, the best and worst reps blur into an average, and problems surface after the client is gone. The source of truth is the conversation itself: reply speed, forgotten clients, promises kept and money per person; and the meeting should run on exceptions, not on retelling.
- Why your CRM isn't working in sales, and what to do about itA CRM stops working when it lives apart from where the selling happens: clients write in messaging apps, sales reps answer from personal phones, and the records get an after-the-fact retelling. The data starts to drift, you stop trusting it, and the CRM goes empty. The fix is not more fields or penalties. It is order: you decide who owns the numbers and the conversations, what counts as a fact and who answers for it, and then you work by those rules yourself.