Pipeline stages with exit criteria: a six-stage example

What a pipeline stage is

A pipeline is the list of steps a deal moves through in your CRM (the customer relationship management system where your deals and contacts live), from the first real conversation to a signed contract. Each step is a stage.

Most pipelines are named after what the rep did: demo done, proposal sent, follow-up. That tells you the rep was busy. It does not tell you where the buyer is. A useful stage describes something the buyer has said or done, because the buyer decides whether the deal closes.

Why stages need written exit criteria

Exit criteria are the facts that must be true before a deal leaves a stage. Without them, each rep moves deals by feel. One rep's negotiation is a buyer who asked for the price. Another's is a buyer whose lawyer is reading the contract. The stage name is the same and the deals are nothing alike.

That matters because everything else is built on the stage. The forecast, which is your estimate of what will close and when, adds up deals by stage. If the stages are opinions, the forecast is a sum of opinions.

Good exit criteria have three properties.

• They are about the buyer, not about your activity.
• They can be answered yes or no from the record, without asking the rep.
• They are short. Two or three per stage. A stage with eight criteria gets ignored.

An example six-stage pipeline

Here is one set you can adapt. The names matter less than the tests. The criteria are tied to four moves from The Salecopy Method: Signal, List, Paper and Yes.

• 1. Qualified. Leaves when a named buyer contact has agreed to a discovery call on a specific date.
• 2. Discovery. Leaves when Why now and Buyer's deadline are filled in (Signal), and the buyer has confirmed what the problem costs them each month.
• 3. Solution agreed. Leaves when the Decision maker and Budget holder roles each have a contact attached (List), and both have seen the proposed scope.
• 4. Negotiation. Enters only with your walk-away written down. Leaves when terms are agreed and the mutual plan has an owner and a date on every step (Paper).
• 5. Contract. Leaves when every step on the mutual plan is marked done and the contract is signed. Have your lawyer review the contract terms.
• 6. Closed won or closed lost. Either way, write the reason in one sentence.

How the criteria tie to the method

Signal sits at the discovery gate because of what it prevents. If nothing changed for the buyer, there is no deadline, and a deal with no deadline is negotiated forever. Better to find that out in discovery than at the pricing call.

List sits before negotiation because deals are rarely lost to the person you are talking to. They are lost to someone you never met. If the budget holder role is empty, you are agreeing terms with a person who cannot sign.

Paper is the exit from negotiation. A verbal yes with no plan is where signatures slip a quarter. The mutual plan lists legal review, security review, the signature and the kickoff, each with an owner on both sides and a date.

Yes runs through every stage. From discovery onward, a deal needs a next step with a date and a buyer contact who owns it. If the buyer will not put a date on anything, the deal goes back a stage, and the forecast says so.

What happens to the forecast when stages mean something

The first thing you will see is deals moving backward. A deal that sat in negotiation with no budget holder attached returns to solution agreed. The pipeline looks smaller for a while. Nothing was lost. The record caught up with what was already true.

After that, three things change in how you read the forecast.

• A stage now tells you the same thing for every rep, so you can compare deals without a meeting.
• When a deal slips, you can see which criterion it is stuck on. The conversation moves from how the rep feels to what is missing.
• If you weight the forecast by stage, the weights start to mean something, because the stage does.

How to put this in place

Most CRMs, including HubSpot and Salesforce, let you require a field before a deal can move to the next stage. That is the whole mechanism. The work is agreeing the criteria.

The same idea applies before a deal exists. A lead should become a deal only when it meets written criteria too. That is what lead scoring and lifecycle stages are for.

• Write the criteria on one page with the team. If a rep cannot answer one from a real deal, rewrite it.
• Add the fields and make them required at the right gate.
• Re-stage every open deal in one sitting, against the new criteria. Expect deals to move back.
• After a month, remove any criterion nobody uses and tighten any that everything passes.

What to add to your CRM

A prompt to draft exit criteria for your own pipeline

You are helping me write exit criteria for my sales pipeline. You only draft for me to review. Do not contact anyone.

What I sell: [your product or service, in one sentence]
Who buys it: [type of company and the job titles involved]
My current stages, in order: [list your stage names]
What usually has to happen on the buyer's side before they sign: [for example legal review, security review, board approval]

For each stage, write two or three exit criteria. Each one must:
1. Describe something the buyer has said or done, not something my rep did.
2. Be answerable yes or no from the deal record, without asking the rep.
3. Name the CRM field that would hold the answer.

Use these fields where they fit: Why now, Buyer's deadline, Buying roles (Decision maker, Budget holder, User, Legal or procurement), Mutual plan, Next step, Next step owner, Next step date.

If one of my stages describes rep activity only, say so and suggest a new name. If two stages have the same criteria, say which one to remove.

Do not invent details about my buyers or my sales process. Finish with a list of what was missing from my description that you would need in order to make the criteria sharper.