Sales pipelines and the board view
One pipeline per repeatable sales process. Up to 7 stages. The board view is where the team actually drives deals forward.
A Pipeline is a sequence of stages a deal walks through from first contact to closed. Vendly supports multiple pipelines per organisation — a typical B2B SaaS team might have one for New Business and a separate one for Renewals, because the stages are genuinely different.
Designing your pipeline
- Keep it to 5-7 stages. More stages don't improve discipline; people stop updating them.
- Every stage should answer 'what HAS to be true for the lead to advance?' — concrete criteria, not vibes.
- End stages MUST include Won and Lost. Anything else (e.g. 'On hold') is a permission slip to never close a deal.
- If two pipelines share the same stage definitions, you only need one. Multiple pipelines exist for genuinely different processes (B2B vs B2C, New vs Renewal, etc.).
Example pipeline — B2B services
| Stage | Entry criterion | Exit criterion |
|---|---|---|
| New | Lead created | First contact made |
| Contacted | Spoken / messaged with the lead | Confirmed they have a real need + budget hint |
| Qualified | Need + budget + timeline confirmed | Decision-maker met, scope agreed |
| Proposal | Quote / SOW sent | Buyer responds (any answer) |
| Negotiation | Buyer is negotiating commercial terms | Buyer accepts or rejects |
| Won | Buyer accepts. Convert to Client. | (closed) |
| Lost | Buyer rejects or goes silent past the timeline. | (closed) |
Configuring stages
Using the board
Pipeline Board shows every open lead as a card in its current stage column. Drag a card to a new column to change its stage. Each column has a header total (count + sum of deal values) so you can see at-a-glance where the pipeline is bloated and where it's thin.
Pipeline-health metrics
- Coverage ratio — total open deal value divided by the quota for the period. Healthy is 3-4x for new business.
- Conversion ratio — deals won vs deals entered. 20-30% is typical B2B; 50%+ on warm referrals.
- Average days in stage — anomalies surface stuck stages. If 'Proposal' averages 6 weeks, the proposal-writing process is the bottleneck.
- Closed-won by source — shows which marketing actually produces revenue, not just signups.
Pipeline reviews work best when the team walks the BOARD together every Monday, not the list. The visual cluster of deals at one stage is a faster discussion than scrolling rows.