One key component of CRM is tracking the sales process. When you create a deal for an account, you can start tracking the various stages of the deal to give you a clear picture of the deals that are likely to close and the ones that are not.
What are deal stages?
Deal stages should show exactly where each prospect is in your sales process and how likely they are to close as a customer based on that stage. The stages can slightly differ from one business to another. It’s essential to set up your deal stages to match how your team actually works and sells.
To sum up, a deal stage is the main milestone a person has to pass in order to become your customer.
To understand the default deal stages, please read What are the default pipeline deal stages in Sales CRM?
Customize deal stages
- Go to Sales CRM > Settings > Deal settings.
- Click on Manage your pipeline settings.
- From there you can:
- Edit each deal stage name or win probability.
- Delete a deal stage using the bin icon.
- Reorder the stages by dragging and dropping them from the vertical grip.
- Add new stages.
- Once done, you can save it by clicking on Save.
All saved changes are reflected on the Deals page. You can find these customized stages in the deal stage drop-down and also in the Kanban view of the Deals page.
- Won and Lost are default stages in every pipeline, they cannot be deleted.
- The number of stages is capped at 20. But, at least a minimum of 3 stages is mandatory (including Won and Lost).
- Each stage in a pipeline must have a unique name.
What can I update?
Every pipeline differs from one company to another, but we can give you a few pieces of advice here.
For instance, if your process involves sending contracts to your clients, you can edit your deal stage list accordingly (Contract drafted, Contract sent, Contract signed, etc.)
You might also simply want to have more details and have extra deal stages like Call scheduled, Meeting Agreed, Demo done, Proposal sent, etc.
You can also edit the probability values for each stage based on which forecasting is done for your Deals.
⏩ What's next?
- What are the default pipeline deal stages in Sales CRM?
- Forecast your expected sales using a weighted pipeline
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.