Working with your Pipeline
Your pipeline represents your business process from start to finish, with each pipeline stage being a step in the process of meeting your end goal. Each stage should have unique milestones that you and your team use to progress your cases.
You can access your Pipeline(s) and Cases by clicking the Pipelines menu item in the left side panel of the admin.
The Stages of a Pipeline
The stages of a Pipeline represent a path from a new case, to a won, lost, or abandoned status. There should be defined criteria within your business process for when a case can enter or exit each stage.
To move your case through the pipeline stages, simply click and drag the opportunity and drop it into the next stage. Note that dragging a case should only be done in manual pipelines and not automated pipelines like the Catastrophic Plan Builder.
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Your stages are completely customizable and will depend on the use case of your business and the milestones of your process.
Let’s explore some examples of different pipelines and stages:
Loan Offer:
Qualified → Follow-Up → Presentation → Contract Sent → Negotiation
Recruitment:
Phone Interview → First In-Person Interview → Second In-Person Interview → Reference Check → Offer Letter
As you progress the case and meet the defined criteria for each stage, you’ll move your case to the next stage of the pipeline until you finally reach the end of the opportunity and mark the deal won, lost, or abandoned.
What Pipeline Stages should I be using?
When identifying what Pipeline stages will work for your business, keep the following tips in mind:
Limit the number of stages -- too many stages can confuse your process!
Less is More (4-6 stages is optimal)
Each stage should clearly define where your case is in the process
Set quantifiable milestones for your stages to make it easy to know when a deal should move to a new stage, such as:
Approval of a user
Acceptance of Terms
Signed Contract
Create a new Pipeline
To create a new pipeline, follow the steps below:
Click the Pipelines menu item on the left side of the screen
In the Pipelines screen, select the dropdown showing the list of available pipelines.
Scroll down and click CREATE NEW PIPELINE.
Type a name for your new pipeline in the Name field.
Next you’ll add all the stages for your pipeline. Repeat the steps below for each additional stage.
Enter the name of the stage in the Name field under the Stages section.
For Win Probability %, enter the percentage of likelihood that each case will be marked as “Won” as it progresses through each pipeline stage. The beginning stages of your pipeline will have a lower probability than the later stages, as the case moves through the pipeline and becomes more likely to be won as each milestone is reached.
Click + Add Stage if you would like to add another blank row to populate.
Once you’ve added all the stages, click Save.
Navigate back to the Pipeline section. You can now switch between Pipelines by clicking the drop down menu in the upper left corner, choosing the pipeline you just created by selecting it by name from the menu.