What is pipeline management? Examples and best practices for 2025

Generating leads without tracking them in a pipeline is like filling a leaky bucket. No much how much effort you pour in, you won’t understand how much you’re losing or why your effort isn’t translating. Healthy sales pipeline management is essential to turning more leads into customers.

In this article, we’ll look at what is pipeline management, cover some best practices to succeed with it, give you some examples of what real pipelines look like, and cover how software like monday CRM ties everything together with visual pipeline management powered by AI.

What is sales pipeline management?

Sales pipeline management is the practice of overseeing, directing, and optimizing leads and sales opportunities as they move through each stage of the cycle. Your sales pipeline displays potential customers’ journeys from initial contact to closing and even post-sales. Managing your pipeline involves analyzing, improving, and supercharging your sales processes to attract more revenue.

On a practical level, sales pipeline management includes:

• Splitting your pipeline into segments and assessing for any bottlenecks
• Using key metrics to measure your pipeline’s performance
• Allocating resources where they’re needed most
• Regularly updating your pipeline data
• Reviewing real-time data to inform decision-making
• Analyzing failures to make better choices in the future

When done well, sales pipeline management allows your company to grow sustainably by establishing ground rules and effective strategies that improve sales.

Often, teams use sales pipeline software to easily manage and visualize everything in one place and keep team members all on the same page.

Sales pipeline vs sales process: What’s the difference?

A sales pipeline and sales process are closely related, but represent two different things. A sales process is the repeatable set of processes and actions that sales reps follow to move a prospect from initial contact to a closed deal. On the other hand, a sales pipeline is the visual representation of where all your active deals currently sit within that process at any given moment.

Think of the sales process as the roadmap that every deal should follow, while the pipeline is the snapshot showing which deals are at which milestones along that route. Understanding the difference between the two is important, since a business may have an excellent sales process but still suffer from a poorly managed pipeline, or vice versa.

The 8 stages of the sales pipeline cycle

Properly managing your pipeline involves a sales professional or pipeline manager tracking activities that pull people through your pipeline stages. To better understand how to construct your sales pipeline, here’s a look at the 8 different stages to turn a lead from a prospect to a customer. Note that these stages may look different depending on the industry you’re in or the products or services you sell. In the next section, we’ll break down a few more sales pipeline examples.

1. Prospecting

Prospecting involves identifying potential customers who may be interested in your product or service. This may result from conducting market research, generating leads through marketing initiatives like social media campaigns, website sign-ups, referrals, or cold emailing.

2. Lead qualification

The next step of your sales pipeline is where you evaluate the likelihood of each lead turning into a customer. This step helps weed out the leads who either aren’t a good fit for your company or aren’t likely to convert so that your team can focus on high-value prospects. You want to evaluate or score leads based on criteria such as budget, authority, need, and timing (BANT). Advanced solutions like monday CRM can do this automatically without manual intervention, speeding up your pipeline.

3. Initial contact

Start the conversation by contacting qualified leads to introduce your product or service. Depending on your product or service, this isn’t typically the stage of your pipeline where you want to go in with a hard sell. Sales professionals often use this as a fact-finding mission to understand the potential customer’s pain points and then build a sales strategy that will work for them.

4. Nurturing

Nurturing prospects can be a long game that involves multiple conversations and questions. The process involves personalizing content like emails and sales pitches, product demos, and meetings to address issues. It can take time for leads to develop trust in the brand, and for sales professionals to deeply understand the problem their products or services can solve.

5. Proposal

This stage of the sales cycle is all about presenting a tailored, formal proposal that highlights how the benefits and features of your product or service are the solutions your leads have been looking for. You might run a demo, meet in person to run the lead through your product or service, or address different ways your business can solve their pain points.

6. Negotiation or objection handling

If the lead has any objections, concerns, or needs to make any changes to your proposal, this happens during the negotiation stage. The negotiation can also be about the terms of the sale or the contract, including deliverables, deadlines, or costs.

7. Closing

In this stage of your pipeline, a formal agreement or purchase order signals that the lead has successfully turned into a won client and that the deal has closed. Some people consider this the final stage of the sales pipeline, handing off to the customer success team to begin onboarding.

8. Post-sales

This optional pipeline management stage ensures customer satisfaction and explores opportunities for additional sales. You might transfer your new customer to the customer success team for onboarding or post-sales care so that they have the best chance to succeed with your product. Post-sales is also an excellent time to send out customer feedback surveys or prime your customers for up-selling or cross-selling opportunities.

Examples of sales pipelines in different industries

You may know what a sales pipeline does, what it looks like, and the stages it involves, but how do they actually function in practice? Above, we looked at a typical sales pipeline that could be applied to many scenarios, including a B2B sales and a SaaS pipeline. However, some industries may require longer or shorter pipelines based on the complexity of each deal.

Below, we’ll break down some other common examples to give you a better idea of what real pipelines look like across various industries.

E-commerce pipeline

1. Website visit
2. Product browsing
3. Add to cart
4. Checkout
5. Payment processed
6. Order fulfilled
7. Customer support or repeat purchase

Real estate pipeline

1. Lead inquiry
2. Initial consultation
3. Property showing
4. Offer preparation
5. Negotitation
6. Home inspection
7. Financing approval
8. Closing

Financial services pipeline

1. Inquiry
2. Introductory meeting
3. Financial assessment
4. Risk profile analysis
5. Custom plan presentation
6. Account opening
7. Funcing
8. Ongoing relationship management

Manufacturing pipeline

1. Lead identification
2. Initial contact
3. Technical needs assessment
4. Site visit
5. Custom quote
6. Prototype approval
7. Negotiation
8. Purchase order
9. Production and delivery
10. Quality assurance

Benefits of effective pipeline management

Sales teams can gain a lot by establishing a comprehensive pipeline with the right software. Though it may seem like extra work, once you’re done initially setting up the pipeline and its relevant automations, the rest is smooth sailing. Here are a few core ways teams can benefit from effective sales pipeline management.

Forecast team performance

Sales pipelines are a great way to get a visual overview of where your sales currently stand so that you can forecast future deal closures. This helps sales managers assess whether their team will meet sales targets or if resources need to be shuffled to attain quotas.

Improve team productivity

Sales teams that work with pipelines are always aware of what comes next. Rather than wasting time planning out sales tasks, it’s very clear about what actions should be taken based on where a deal is in the pipeline.

Decrease bottlenecks and errors

When sales teams have more visibility into their sales funnel, it’s easier to avoid costly mistakes and bottlenecks. For example, a sales manager may notice that deals often get stuck in the negotiation stage and then take action to simplify processes in this stage to speed things along.

Enhance the customer experience

Teams can improve customer satisfaction and create a more seamless overall customer experience by navigating each deal with a pipeline. When sales agents understand where each lead is in a pipeline, they can be more proactive about resolving issues and offering the right content or suggestions at the right time.

Streamline sales collaboration

Handing off leads or deals between sales agents is a lot smoother when everything is clearly tracked with sales pipeline software. For example, if every rep in a sales team has the same access to the team pipeline, a senior rep may notice a new rep’s deal is stalled in the pipeline and jump in with insights and recommendations.

5 pipeline management best practices

Managing a sales pipeline requires ongoing attention. If every sales rep is doing their part in keeping a pipeline updated, everything should flow smoothly. To make things even easier, follow these best practices to get the most out of your pipeline management:

1. Always be prospecting

Prospecting may seem like a no-brainer, but busy sales reps can take their foot off the gas when their sales pipeline appears full. Following the process and keeping prospecting activity levels high is the only way to ensure your pipeline stays full, blows past sales goals, and sets new records.

2. Make follow-up a routine practice

The days of one-call closes are practically over. According to Databox, the average sales cycle is 2.1 months long, extending to 2.5 months for B2B SaaS companies. Prospects are constantly being bombarded by calls and emails from your competitors, who are all vying for their attention. Following up regularly and providing value is the only way to cut through the noise.

Slipping seamlessly into your pipeline management, software like monday CRM can automate parts of the process by sending automated follow-ups and personalized messages using AI at predetermined intervals.

3. Focus on a few critical pipeline metrics

The number of key performance indicators (KPIs) your company could track is staggering. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of possible metric combinations that might improve your bottom line. What matters most is picking metrics your reps, leaders, and stakeholders understand and that align with your company’s overall strategy.

Some common metrics to consider include:

• Average sales velocity: How quickly leads move through your pipeline.
• Average deal size: Total revenue over a set period divided by the quantity of closed-won opportunities.
• Pipeline total value: The combined value of all opportunities at each sales cycle stage.
• Win rate: The percentage of prospects that convert to customers divided by all deals in the pipeline for that period.
• Lead response time: How long it takes to follow up on a lead.

Once you’ve determined which KPIs to measure, make sure to track them all with reports, dashboards, and analytics in software like monday CRM.

4. Automate repetitive workflows

You hired your sales reps to sell, not to do admin work, which is where sales automation comes in. Automations can serve different purposes at each stage of your pipeline. For example, you might use automation to notify a sales team member once a prospect’s lead score reaches a certain threshold.

Later down the pipeline, when leads are already warm, you can create automations to send personalized follow-up emails after demos, schedule reminders for contract reviews, or instantly update deal stages when key actions are completed. Thanks to automations, you can free up your reps to focus on high-value conversations instead of manual data entry.

5. Regularly clean up your pipeline

Your sales pipeline can decay if you don’t maintain it. Imagine that a sales proposal was presented to a lead for $8,000 last year, but they haven’t picked up the phone or engaged with any emails since. You may assume the opportunity has faded. This potential customer has lost interest, shifted priorities, or purchased already.

If you leave the opportunity in your pipeline month over month, not only is your sales forecast skewed, but your team wastes time and mental energy on deals that will never close, obscuring the real opportunities that deserve attention and resources. Effective pipeline management requires cleaning and maintaining your sales opportunity list and setting time-sensitive follow-up deadlines.

The role of a CRM for sales pipeline optimization

There are different ways sales teams can manage their pipelines, but arguably the best way is to use a dedicated platform for pipeline management. Rather than using manual or outdated practices like spreadsheets, pipeline management solutions like customer relationship management (CRM) software empower teams to take control of every opportunity in real-time.

CRM software gives teams the ability to automate any stage of their sales pipeline, track prospect interactions, generate accurate forecasts, and seamlessly collaborate, all in one platform. Sales agents can optimize pipeline management practices using a unified platform that acts as a single source of truth for the entire team, keeping everyone aligned on deals so that nothing gets forgotten.

Supercharge your pipeline management with monday CRM

Effective pipeline management is about creating a repeatable process that produces consistent results for your sales team. Robust pipeline management software, like monday CRM, is a must here, enabling you to visualize every stage in your process and proactively nurture relevant opportunities toward the finish line.

Built on top of the monday.com Work OS, monday CRM is a purpose-built, industry-specific AI-powered CRM that provides deep and comprehensive workflows for sales and customer-facing professionals. Teams can cultivate long-lasting customer relationships while also managing their pipeline and using advanced insights and analytics to improve each stage.

Let’s take a closer look at some of monday CRM’s features that make it a leading platform for sales pipeline management.

AI-powered pipeline automation

Create CRM automations based on specific triggers and conditions, such as moving opportunities to different groups or assigning them to specific team members. Thanks to monday CRM’s built-in AI, automations are smarter than ever and can be used to predict deal outcomes, suggest next-best actions based on historical patterns, and even draft personalized follow-up communications.

Smarter campaigns based on pipeline data

With monday campaigns, teams can create smart marketing and email campaigns that use information from your pipeline to reach more prospects. Sync sales and marketing with essential data from your sales pipeline that can be turned into insights that inform winning marketing campaigns.

Customizable and visible pipeline management

Visibly manage your entire sales pipeline from start to finish and customize how you view your deals. Customize your pipeline with elements like Funnel Charts, which allow you to see pipeline conversion rates at different stages in the funnel, or a Deal Stages widget for a 360-degree view of your pipeline opportunities. With 27+ dashboard views, 36+ columns, and 25+ widgets, you can set up your pipeline with the exact intel you need to manage your sales.

Mass email powered by AI

Artificial intelligence is built into our platform, making it easy for sales pros to send thousands of emails to leads and prospects in their pipeline. This high-converting feature saves time while personalizing the message content according to the customer data you have stored in monday CRM, creating communications like follow-ups that are relevant to each stage of your pipeline.

Overcoming common roadblocks for a successful pipeline

Establishing your sales pipeline shouldn’t be difficult if you follow best practices and build it according to the stages outlined above. However, there are still roadblocks to look out for that can impact the success of your sales pipeline. To get your team started on the right foot, make sure to look out for these pipeline challenges and understand how to overcome them.

• Poor data hygiene: Outdated contact information, duplicate lead records, and stale opportunities can clutter your real opportunities. Make sure to consistently clean and update your pipeline or use a data enrichment tool to keep contact data relevant.
• Inconsistent stage outlines: When each member of your sales team interprets pipeline stages differently, things can get messy. Ensure your team is clear on what each stage entails and what the requirements are for moving a lead to the next stage.
• Inadequate lead qualification: Unqualified leads clog up your pipeline and waste resources. Get your team used to removing unqualified leads from the early stages of a pipeline to avoid bloating and unrealistic opportunities.
• Unrealistic pipeline goals: Setting targets without considering forecasts, historical conversion rates, team capacity, or sales cycle length is a recipe for disaster. Instead, use insights and data analytics from each stage of your pipeline to inform realistic goals.
• Misalignment between teams: If sales and marketing aren’t aligned on what generates leads, then your pipeline will be full of unqualified prospects that don’t match your ideal customer profile. Establish clear handoff processes, communication channels, and sync on new data to keep everything running smoothly.

Take control of your sales pipeline with the right software

An effective sales pipeline leads to more predictable revenue growth. By defining clear pipeline stages and using software to track metrics, insights, and maintain proper pipeline hygiene, your sales team can turn chaotic guesswork into reliable, hard data. Implementing the right systems, like monday CRM, will help your sales team combine intuitive pipeline visualization with powerful AI workflow automations so that you can effectively treat every high-value opportunity that comes your way.