Manage your sales pipeline better to build your business

Manage your sales pipeline better to build your business

From the time a business acquires a lead, up until they close a deal - either won or lost, it is essential that they keep track of all the stages within the sales pipeline and ensure a smooth flow between them.

So what is this Sales Pipeline?
It is nothing but a systematic method that one follows to navigate between multiple stages through which a sales prospect goes - from becoming a lead to becoming a customer - and a sales pipeline helps you determine where exactly your opportunities are. Besides, it also outlines the actions that you need to perform in order to convert a prospect into a customer.

Stages in a Sales Pipeline?

There are multiple stages every sales team has, including tasks such as gathering leads and qualifying them:

1. Prospecting
It is the process by which companies attract prospects into their customer database in the hope of nurturing them through a sales process and converting them into customers. They therefore make effort to generate an interest in the prospects towards their products and services. There are various sources through which you can generate leads. Some of them include trade shows, email campaigns, social media, webforms, etc.

2. Nurturing and Qualifying
Once you have generated prospects, you will need to ensure that they are the right fit for your business. Therefore, you will need to qualify them and manage them. This is a crucial step in a sales process as it helps you prioritise the promising leads and keep them at the top of your to-do list.
3. Set Meetings and define prospect's needs
Now, in order to get to know your prospects better, or in other words, understand their requirements, better, you need to set up a meeting with them. After interacting with them on several occasions, you need to tailor your proposal to address their needs. So basically, it is crucial that you articulate how your products or services can help solve their problems.

4. Negotiate and close deal
You have done your job of understanding your prospect's needs and built a solid relationship with them. While some may be ready to purchase your products or services, in the case of other prospects, you may have to address further concerns - all of which will eventually help you provide your customers with exactly what they are looking for. After these terms and conditions are finalized, you will be in a position to close the deal - either in success or otherwise.

While most companies differ in terms of their method for follow-up, and stages in the sales pipeline. the top-level stages continue to remain the same for all.
They are:
  • Prospecting
  • Qualification
  • Proposal 
  • Closing
Benefits of a Sales Pipeline

1. Get a better understanding of the sales process
2. More efficient sales strategy
3. A better understanding of the position of each lead in the sales funnel
4. Less time spent in closing deals.

Manage your Sales Pipeline with Zoho CRM

Now that you have understood the concept of a sales pipeline and its stages, imagine managing the same without a central process in place. Defining the stages in the sales pipeline and tracking the progress in the sales process could be extremely challenging. With the help of a software like Zoho CRM, therefore, you can:
  1. Define stages in a sales pipeline
    It is crucial to define the stages in your sales pipeline early on in order to have a strong sales process as sales reps in your company will know in advance what is expected of them in order to take the lead forward through the sales pipeline and finally close the deal. This can be achieved by customising/adding values in stage field within the Deals module in Zoho CRM. For instance, imagine you run a magazine publication. You do not require some of the default values within the stage field, such as Value Proposition or Proposal. You can therefore customise or delete these fields to meet your requirements.

  2. Track your deals
    It is crucial to track your deals to get an idea of the entire progress of your deal and avoid any further errors and make better decisions in terms of your way forward. Also, it is crucial to keep track of all updates in order to avoid missing out on any vital information.

    a) Historical analysis will help you avoid repeating mistakes that may have caused you to lose deals in the past. Therefore analysing your sales stage history in Zoho CRM is crucial as it will give you the number of potentials in each stage for a specific time period.

    b) Another method of tracking your sales pipeline within Zoho CRM is by creating reports and dashboards. You will be able to track your sales trends, marketing campaigns, team performance, etc. with the help of these reports.

    c) With multiple deals within your software, trying to view each of them to determine their status could prove to be quite taxing. However, within Zoho CRM, you can view your deals in a single view with the help of kanban view. It will display the data in an organised manner.

  3. Identify priority deals to focus on

    a) If you want to locate deals that are priority (for instance, deals that are closing this month), you can use advanced filters, which is a powerful search tool that can help you extract necessary information in no time. In this case, therefore, you will be able to quickly locate deals that fit your criteria (deals that are priority) and then you can immediately follow-up on them.

    b) On the other hand, if you want the system to suggest deals that you need to prioritise, you can use Zia, Zoho CRM's data intelligence tool. Based on the trend, she will predict for you those deals that are most likely to be won. This will give you a better understanding of what to focus on. In fact, she will create a view - breaking up your deals into those which are likely to be won, lost, or those which could go either way. This will help you shift your focus onto those deals that require your attention. 

    What are your thoughts on effective sales follow up? Share your questions and opinions by commenting below. Also, feel free to suggest topics for discussion in the CRM Admins Chat Room. 


    • Sticky Posts

    • How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

      Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

    • Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

      Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

    • Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

      <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

    • Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

      Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

    • CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

        Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

    • Recent Topics

    • Fixed Assets beg balance

      Hello, I trust you are well I'm a new zoho books user and I find it difficult to plug in the fixed assets balance and here's what I have done: 1- I imported the fixed assets data into the fixed assets module as per the instructions 2- the import process

    • Syncing with Google calendar, Tasks and Events

      Is it possible to sync Zoho CRM calendar, task and events with Google Calendar's tasks and events. With the increasing adoption by many major tool suppliers to sync seamlessly with Google's offerings (for instance I use the excellent Any.do task planning

    • CRM Deluge how can link attach file with workdrive file.

      Hi, We have create file at workdrive and would like to link to attachment at crm module by deluge. Right now can only upload it to attachment but can not link the file from workdrive. Thank you

    • Feature announcement: AI-powered document generator in Zoho Sign

      Hi there! We recently announced manual document creation by offering an editor within Zoho Sign. Today, we are excited to announce AI-powered document generation to help you draft agreements, purchase orders, and other important business documents in

    • Permanently deleted files

      Is there a way to get back permanently deleted files from your account if they were accidentally deleted and no longer recoverable from the recycling bin? I know I am probably screwed but I just figured I would ask.

    • Shared Mailbox in iOS app

      Hi, On the desktop I am using a Shared mailbox for our company's general mailbox that somebody else should be able to view. In the iOS app however I can't find it? Old sources on the internet says this isn't possible but that can't be right? Somebody

    • Tip #41- Simplify Compliance and Efficiency with Zoho Assist’s Data Cleanup Feature- 'Insider Insights'

      Managing device data efficiently is just as important as securing remote access. With Zoho Assist’s Data Cleanup feature, admins can easily remove outdated or unnecessary device records, keeping the console organized and secure. This action is carried

    • Revenue Management: #6 Revenue Recognition in Professional Services Industry

      If you run a consulting firm, agency, or any service-based business, you have a situation where you have signed the contract, maybe even sent the invoice, and have received some initial payments. So, can you consider this as revenue? What if the project

    • Zoho fsm scheduled maintenance dispatch

      Hi, I'm reaching out regarding an issue I'm encountering with the Scheduled Maintenance feature in Zoho FSM. I’m trying to configure it so that it automatically dispatches all maintenance jobs scheduled within the next 150 days, starting from today. However,

    • zoho.inventory.getRecords returns no records

      I running a custom function (Deluge) in Zoho Flow with a connection to Zoho Inventory. To debug the problem, I created the test function below. It returns "Number of contacts fetched: 0". This confirms that there's no issue with the org ID or connection

    • Feature announcement - Simplifying document creation with Zoho Sign

      Hi there, We are pleased to announce the release of our document creation feature, enabling you to create, edit, and finalize documents like agreements, purchase orders, and contracts without relying on external tools or applications. <br> This

    • Integrating File Attachments in Zoho Flow Email Notifications

      Hi, I would like to be able to send an email once an entry is made in a form, and in this email, I would like to attach a file that has been added to the form using the ImageUpload (or FileUpload) widget. So, I started by creating a flow that will trigger

    • Zoho project purchases

      Hi Folks, I think having a purchase module in projects will help in putting together a project p and L. Project wise purchases and expenses.  Do let me know your thoughts.

    • Create Tasklist with Tasklist Template using API v3

      In the old API, we could mention the parameter 'task_template_id' when creating a tasklist via API to apply a tasklist template: https://www.zoho.com/projects/help/rest-api/tasklists-api.html#create-tasklist In API v3 there does not seem to be a way to

    • How can I restore all the deleted Time entries of a Task in Zoho Projects

      How can I restore all the deleted Time entries of a Task in Zoho Projects? Query: In Zoho Projects, I cloned a task and deleted the time entries from the cloned task. However, this also deleted the time entries from the original task. How can I restore

    • Is there a way to make an account inactive in ZoHo Desk

      We have a few Clients "Accounts" that we no longer do business with. It would be beneficial for them to not show up in lists. However, we want to go back and view tickets, time, etc.

    • How to set the value of the Phone field importing contacts in Zoho Desk

      Hi everyone, i'm new in Zoho Desk, we're setting up the environment and i'm importing contacts from another CRM using a file CSV and i'm getting a problem with phone numbers (italian): the leading zero is cut away, also if the value is inside double quotes.

    • Set Custom Icon for Custom Modules in new Zoho CRM UI

    • Deprecation Notice: OpenAI Assistants API will be shut down on August 26, 2026

      I recieved this email from openAI what does it means for us that are using the integration and what should we do? Earlier this year, we shared our plan to deprecate the Assistants API once the Responses API reached feature parity. With the launch of Conversations,

    • How to center a field inside a section?

      I’ve been trying to center a field inside a section in Zoho Canvas. When I align it visually, it looks centered in the editor, but after clicking Save, the field appears misaligned on the actual canvas. I also tried setting the field to full width, but

    • Kaizen #192 - Implementing Custom Token Persistence in Python SDK

      Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! Last week, we discussed how to implement Login with Zoho using OAuth 2.0 and saw how to bring it to life in a real-world application with the Zoho CRM Python SDK. We also discussed how Zylker Academy built a custom

    • Showing the map along with mileage expense

      When you use the GPS to track mileage, it shows you the map of the actual path travelled. It would be very useful and practical to save that map with the mileage expense, so that when the report is created, it provides a map of each mileage expense associated

    • Enable Validation Rule for Multi-Select Picklist Field

      Zoho, Please allow validation rules for multi-select fields.

    • File Upload field not showing in workflow

      Hi, I have added a field on Zoho CRM. I want to use it in a workflow where that particular field is updated based on another field, however it is not showing up in the field list to select it in the workflow. Why is this please?

    • CRM Custom function updating a module record shows the Super Admin user as the record modifier

      Dear Zoho CRM Team, Is there any way to update this so that when a custom function has updated a record the Super Admin user doesn't become the modifier? This happens on the record as a modifier and shows up in the audit logs. It would be more useful

    • Best practice importing items and matching assemblies

      Hi, I was wondering what would be the best practice to import items and composite items (assemblies) From my backup, what should I import first? The items or the composite items? I am on Zoho one, using inventory and books. Kind regards, Sabine

    • Best way to fetch employee names from Zoho People into Zoho Creator Inventory Stock Form field Employee Name Lookup

      Hi Team, I have a requirement in my Zoho Creator application (Inventory Stock Adjustment) where I need to fetch employee names from Zoho People and use them as a lookup in a form. Currently, I am considering using an integration field to fetch this data

    • get file api is returning Junk data

      I am working on extension development where at one point I need to retrieve attachments on records I found out I can use only invokeconnection and not invokeurl in extension development The invoke connection returns the image in raw binary format. When

    • Need help with message box

      End user updates many records at once. Each have unique serial number. They want a confirmation box that says starting number, ending number and qty. Is there any way to do this? I been searching and asking support but seems like no great solution.

    • [Webinar] The Transformative Power of Gen BI

      Traditional decision-making tools are no longer enough. The integration of generative AI into business intelligence (BI) is proving to be a true game changer—enabling businesses to make faster, smarter, and better informed decisions. Early adopters of

    • Backorder process review - Automating Removal of Sales Order from "On Hold" When PO is Received

      Hello Zoho Inventory Team, Currently, sales orders in On Hold status are released only when the bill for the purchase order is created. In our workflow, it would be much more efficient if the sales order could automatically move out of On Hold as soon

    • How to access the saved Query using API?

      I have created a query in setting. Is it possible to access it from a API? What's the endpoint? I tried /v8/queries/important_deals but didnt' work.

    • création d'une base de données

      base de donnee d'un lycée

    • User Session variables to recall after form submit & redirect to menu

      Hey, Forgive me if this is a simple answer I have overlooked. I have built a big onboarding process for my SAAS platform which is built and managed by an external Dev team. I am hoping to embed my new creator app on the SAAS platform. I have a menu page

    • Zoho Writer Merge Template with data from Zoho Analytics Views

      Hello, Is there any way to pull information from Zoho Analytics and put it into a Merge Template? I am trying to create a bulk export of one report that filters on a field to create a single document for each of the filter fields.

    • Having to enter bill before stock shows as available.

      Hi, Am I right in thinking you must create a bill from the purchase order receipt before the goods are available for shipping?

    • Agent Availability Report

      From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports Businesses need to track when their support agents check in and check out from work. This report, titled Agent Availability, is one of the static reports that helps managers track the number

    • Writing by Hand in "Write" Notes

      Hi there! I just downloaded this app a few moments ago, and I was wondering if there was a way to write things by hand in "Write" mode instead of just typing in the keyboard. It would make things a bit more efficient for me in this moment. Thanks!

    • AI-driven construction analytics using Zoho Projects Plus

      Construction projects thrive on timelines; if a project is completed on or before the expected time, it makes headlines, but if it gets delayed, the company’s credibility will be at risk. Such projects require precise planning and constant monitoring,

    • Canadian payroll

      Hello ZOHO, is any updates on when payroll for Canada will be available?

    • Next Page