Introduction

A sales pipeline represents different stages in a sale that a deal moves through, from initiation to closure. For example, a company that sells audio equipment such as loudspeakers, home theaters, etc. may have the following sales stages for selling Loudspeakers: 
New, Qualification, Value Proposition, Negotiation, and Closed.

Need for multiple sales pipelines

Different businesses follow different sales cycles, and this raises the need for having multiple sales pipelines. Also, every stage in a pipeline has a specific set of work items. This is why Vtiger allows you to create multiple pipelines and customize them based on product lines, deal size, or customer type. 
For example, an audio equipment company can have two different pipelines for selling headphones and home theatre systems.

• Headphones Pipeline: New, Qualification, Value Proposition, and Closed 

• Home Theatres Pipeline: New, Qualification, Delivering Demo, Value Proposition, Negotiation, Ready to Close, and Closed

Feature Availability and Limits

Getting Started with Sales Pipelines 

Standard pipeline and stages

Vtiger CRM provides you with a default Standard pipeline that can be customized by adding or deleting sales stages, to suit the sales process of your business. The pipeline cannot be deleted since there must be at least one pipeline to map to the sales process.

The Standard pipeline comes with default stages and probabilities.

Creating a Pipeline

You can create a pipeline only if you are an Admin user.

1. Click the User Menu on the top right corner of the screen.
2. Click Settings.
3. Look for the Marketing & Sales section.
4. Select Pipelines & Stages.
5. Click the +Add Pipeline button.
6. Fill out the following fields in the Create Pipeline block:
   1. Pipeline Name -Name of the pipeline.
   2. Pipeline can be assigned by - Enter or Select Roles that are allowed to assign the pipeline.
   3. Description - A short description of the pipeline.

You can use the default stages for the new pipeline or add new stages by following the procedure below.

1. Click the +Add Sales Stage button to add a new stage in the Sales Stage block.
2. Fill in the following fields in the pop-up:
   1. Sales Stage - Name of the sales stage
   2. Probability - Percentage value for the sales stage
   3. Sales stage can be assigned by - Roles that are allowed to assign the sales stage
   4. Select Color - Choose a color to highlight the sales stage. (You can choose a custom color.)
3. Click Save to add the new sales stage to the pipeline.
4. Rearrange the values to suit your business’ sales process by dragging and dropping them. 
5. Click Save to add the new pipeline to CRM.

Using Pipelines in Vtiger

Let us learn about the areas where sales pipelines are used in Vtiger CRM.

• Journey Templates: The Journey Templates widget in a deal and the Deal Journey View lists activities associated with each stage of the pipeline associated with a deal.

• Moving a deal to a different pipeline: There might arise a need to move one or more deals to a different pipeline for better compliance with the sales cycle. You can do this from Deal Journey View and select the new sales stage and probability value for a deal.
  • When a deal is associated with a pipeline, the time spent by the deal in each sales stage of the pipeline is recorded. To move the deal to another pipeline, you must map the time spent in the sales stages of the current pipeline to sales stages in the new pipeline. 

To learn more about moving a deal to a different pipeline, click here.

• Kanban View: Pipelines and pipeline stages are available as filters in the Kanban View for the Deals module.  
  • What can you do in the Kanban View

In the Kanban View, you can move a deal from one sales stage to another with a drag-and-drop action. Also, you can move a deal from its current stage to Closed Won, Closed Lost, or to another pipeline.

• Sales Insights: Pipelines and pipeline stages are available as filters in Sales Insights.

• List View: Default lists such as ‘My Deals’, ‘All Deals’, and ‘Deals Shared With Me’ in Vtiger have Pipeline as a default column. 
  • Pipeline and Sales Stage can be added as columns in custom lists.
• Workflows: Pipeline and Sales Stage can be used to create Entry Criteria. Pipeline and Sales Stage can be used in the following Workflow actions - 
  • Send Mail
  • Update Fields
  • Create Record
  • SMS Task
  • Mobile Push Notification

• Picklist dependency between Pipeline and Stages does not work in:

• Web services
• Webforms
• Gmail plug-in
• Workflows' Create Record action
• Workflows’ Update Fields action
• Import and List View merge

• The default values for Probability in pipelines are not available in:

• Webforms
• Web services
• Gmail plug-in
• Workflows’ Create Record action