Imagine you are talking to forty possible customers at once. Some want a call on Thursday, some are waiting for a quote, some said "after harvest", and one is ready to pay today. Without a system, you will forget someone, and that someone might have bought. A pipeline and a CRM are the system. Sales adverts regularly ask for CRM experience or pipeline management.
What a pipeline is
A sales pipeline is a picture of every open deal, grouped by stage. Picture columns on a board:
- New lead
- Contacted
- Qualified
- Offer sent
- Negotiation
- Won or Lost
Each deal is a card that moves from left to right as it progresses. At a glance you can see how many deals are at each stage, which ones have been stuck too long, and roughly what might close this month.
What a CRM is
CRM stands for customer relationship management. A CRM is software that stores:
- contacts and the organisations they belong to
- deals, each with a value, a stage and an expected close date