About sales pipeline stages

What's my plan?

Zendesk Sell includes typical stages in a sales pipeline that you use as you’re managing deals through your pipeline and reporting on those deals. You can add your own stages and make some changes to these default stages (see Adding stages to your sales pipeline).

If you are on the second highest Sell plan, you can create one additional pipeline. If you are on the highest Sell plan, you can create unlimited pipelines (see Working with multiple sales pipelines).

The default stages in Sell include the active stages Incoming, Qualified, Quote, Closure and the closed stages Won, Unqualified, and Lost.

While these stages follow a logical path forward toward closure, you are not required to follow them in strict order. For example, you’re free to move your deals between stages as needed to reflect the sales process. A deal may go from the Qualified stage directly to the Won stage, skipping the stages in between.

This article contains the following sections:

Active stages

Closed stages

Active stages

As you’re working a deal through the pipeline, it progresses through the active stages Incoming, Qualified, Quote, Closure.

Incoming

The Incoming stage is the first step in a potential closed deal. For example, when you qualify a lead and convert them to a contact and create a deal (see Converting leads), that new deal is in the Incoming stage. The deal is added to this stage automatically when the deal is created.

You probably don’t know much about the potential customer and the scope of the deal at this point. When you contact them and learn about what they want and develop those details, you move the deal to the Qualified stage

Qualified

During the Qualified stage you continue to gather information and requirements to better understand the scope of the deal. When you have the information you need to provide the contact person with a quote, you move the deal to the Quote stage.

Quote

During the Quote stage, you deliver the quote to the contact. If they accept the quote, you move the deal to the Closure stage.

Closure

In the Closure stage, you negotiate the final terms of and seek to close the deal.

Closed stages

The closed stages are used when the deal has reached its conclusion (successfully or not).

Won

If you won the deal, you move it to the Won stage.

Unqualified

You might move a deal to the Unqualified stage to signify that the potential business opportunity was unsuccessful because of a lack of interest from the contact or because delays or losses of the contact’s budget and so on.

Lost

If you lost the deal (for example, to a competitor) you move the deal to the Lost stage.