Deal Stage
A Deal Stage is a defined phase in a company's sales process, such as Discovery, Qualification, Proposal, Negotiation, or Closed Won, that indicates how far an opportunity has progressed and what work has been completed to advance it to the current point. Deal stages serve multiple functions in a CRM: they organize pipeline visually, weight opportunities by close probability for forecast calculation, trigger automated actions or required fields, and provide the data for sales process analysis. The design of deal stages is not a trivial configuration decision, stages should reflect genuine milestones with clear entry and exit criteria, not arbitrary labels that reps interpret differently. Misaligned stage definitions are a primary cause of inaccurate sales forecasting.
A deal stage is a defined phase in the sales process, like Discovery, Proposal, or Negotiation, that signals how far an opportunity has progressed. Stages do real work in a CRM: they organize the pipeline, weight deals by close probability for the forecast, trigger required fields or actions, and feed process analysis. The catch is design. Stages need clear entry and exit criteria, or reps interpret them differently and the forecast suffers.
Frequently Asked Questions
A defined phase in the sales process, such as Discovery, Qualification, Proposal, or Negotiation, that shows how far an opportunity has advanced and what work is done.