When I work with sales teams and we open up their pipeline, more often than not it’s loaded with deals. Millions in the pipeline. Deal upon deal at every stage.
But once we start looking closer, a pattern usually emerges. Many of those deals have no clear next steps, months between the last activity or touchpoint, and, frankly, a good portion of them were never deals to begin with. They were leads at best.
One thing I’ve found to be consistently true is this: most “pipeline problems” are actually definition problems.
A common issue I see is that lead stages or the lead lifecycle are too limited or too short. Leads start piling up, reps get overwhelmed, and to keep themselves sane, they move leads into the pipeline under vague stages like:
- Lead / Inquiry
- Opportunity
- Deal Created
Or something similar.
When this happens, it’s not uncommon for ten, fifty, or even a hundred leads to end up in the pipeline. And if price estimates get attached, it’s easy to see how an extra $100K, $1M, or even $10M quietly sneaks into the forecast.
One of the simplest and most effective solutions we’ve found is to focus on the stages before the pipeline. In other words, clearly defining the lifecycle of a lead and giving reps appropriate places to put opportunities that are progressing, but are not yet deals.
Stages might look something like this:
- Buyer identified
- Buyer contacted
- Interest signaled
- Discovery meeting
- Future opportunity
The goal is to show forward motion on opportunities that might become deals but haven’t yet met the criteria to be treated as one. With clearer lifecycle stages, especially in tools like HubSpot CRM, teams can view, monitor, and progress leads in a kanban-style view similar to a pipeline. This gives both reps and managers real visibility into the work happening before deals ever enter the pipeline.
My encouragement is to work with your team to map out your full prospect → lead → deal process. Build enough stages to accurately reflect how sales actually happens, while keeping things simple enough that views don’t become cluttered. Once the stages are agreed on, take the time to clearly define what each stage means and what qualifies a lead or deal to enter and exit that stage.
The benefit is twofold. First, visibility into your lead engine and pipeline becomes far clearer and more honest. Second, reps often gain a healthier perspective on the sales process from prospect to lead to deal, which increases confidence and, surprisingly, enjoyment.
Take some time in the coming weeks to review your lead and deal criteria, stages, and definitions. Put the right structure in place, hold the team accountable to the new standard, and you’ll end up with cleaner, healthier, and far more realistic pipelines.
Cheers,
Kyle Jager
