What is a sales pipeline?
A sales pipeline is the visual or structured representation of the stages a potential customer moves through from first contact to closed deal. Common stages include lead, contact made, qualified, demo, proposal, negotiation, closed-won or closed-lost.
Pipeline metrics — stage conversion rates, deal velocity, average deal size, pipeline coverage ratio — are central to sales forecasting and capacity planning. Modern CRM tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) automate pipeline tracking.