---
title: "What Is a Sales Pipeline? Definition and Stages | ONEGTMLAB"
description: "A sales pipeline is the set of open deals organized by stage, from first meeting to closed. Learn how pipeline stages work and how teams manage them."
canonical: https://www.onegtmlab.dev/glossary/sales-pipeline
---

# What Is a Sales Pipeline? Definition and Stages | ONEGTMLAB

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GTM Glossary

# Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline is the set of a company's open sales opportunities, organized by the stage each one has reached between the first qualified conversation and a closed deal.

Also called: pipeline, deal pipeline

## Why it matters

The pipeline shows a sales team what it is likely to close and what it needs to create. Leaders use it to forecast revenue, spot deals that have stalled and decide where reps should spend time. If the pipeline is too thin for the target, the team knows early that it needs more prospecting or marketing.

Each company defines its own stages, such as discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation and closed won or closed lost, ideally with clear exit criteria for each. A pipeline is only as useful as the data in it, so teams review it regularly, remove deals that have no real next step and track how long deals sit in each stage.

## Example

A sales team has 30 open deals: 12 in discovery, 9 in demo, 6 in proposal and 3 in negotiation. In the weekly review, the manager notices that four proposal-stage deals have had no activity for a month. Two are moved back to discovery and one is closed lost, which gives a more realistic picture for the forecast.

## Related terms

-   [Pipeline Generation](/glossary/pipeline-generation)
-   [Sales Forecast](/glossary/sales-forecast)
-   [Sales Cycle](/glossary/sales-cycle)
-   [Win Rate](/glossary/sales-win-rate)
-   [CRM (Customer Relationship Management)](/glossary/crm)

## Related service

[RevOps Clean CRM data, lead routing and reporting your team can trust.](/services/revops)

## Related playbook

-   [Outbound Sales Playbook From a signal or event list to the right buyers, one channel each, with every row explained.](/growth-playbooks/outbound-sales)

[← All GTM terms, A to Z](/glossary)

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