CRM Pipeline Stages: Setup & Exit-Criteria Worksheet

How should you define stages in a CRM sales pipeline?

Name stages after observable progress in the buying process and define the evidence required to move forward. Assign an owner and a next action to each active opportunity. In Chirply, columns are stages, cards are deals, and stage changes can trigger automations. Test the transitions with a sample deal before the team uses the board for live work.

Write the stage rules before arranging columns

A stage should answer what has happened, rather than how optimistic a salesperson feels. For an illustrative service sale, Inquiry means a request has arrived; Qualified means the team confirmed fit; Proposal shared means the customer received a specific proposal; Won means the agreed acceptance event occurred.

Record the exit condition for each stage. Qualified might require a confirmed service, decision contact and next meeting. Proposal shared might require a dated proposal and an agreed follow-up. Choose criteria that your team can verify from its actual process.

Separate a contact from an opportunity. One person can be involved in several purchases over time, and Chirply permits multiple deals for the same contact. Give each card a title that identifies the specific opportunity so repeat business remains understandable.

Set up and test the board

Use the worksheet as the board's operating definition. Decide whether this board tracks money or a process before inviting the team to use it.

1. Open Pipeline and select the intended board. Check the switcher so the changes belong to the right process.
2. Use Add a stage at the end of the board. Open a column's gear to name the stage, set its win chance or mark its won/lost outcome.
3. Reorder columns with their headers or the available left/right controls so the visible sequence matches the process.
4. Open Settings to review the board name and default status. A deal created without an explicit pipeline lands in the default pipeline.
5. Use New deal with a controlled contact. Set the title, value and starting stage appropriate to the pilot.
6. Move the sample card through the stages and inspect any configured Deal stage changed automations. Record the actual transition, task and message behavior before team rollout.

Give every open opportunity a next action

Consider a sample website proposal. Its stage is Proposal shared, its owner is the account lead, and its next action is Confirm scope questions on Thursday. The stage communicates progress; the task communicates work. A stage label by itself does not establish that follow-up is assigned.

Deal templates can prefill a title, value, stage, owner, custom fields and an expected-close offset. Use a template when the same starting information recurs. Editing a template affects future prefilled forms rather than deals already created.

Keep totals meaningful. A column total represents the stored values on its cards. Forecasting requires an explicit method and assumptions, so label forecasts separately from collected revenue in client or management reports.

Review stalled cards with the owner

At a regular team review, check cards whose next action is unclear or whose supporting evidence is old. Ask for the actual customer decision, owner and date. Move stages when the defined evidence changes; update tasks when the work changes.

If new deals arrive on the wrong board, check the default pipeline and the action creating them. If a move creates an unexpected message, inspect the stage-change workflow and its filters. Verify the correction with the sample card before another live transition.

Common questions