If I hired someone tomorrow, could I hand them a territory, a comp plan, and a clear definition of what success looks like in 90 days?
Set up a simple and easy to manage sales pipeline to measure movement towards purchase and identify which deals are stuck. This structure can be used for managing your potential investor pipeline as well but should be kept separate from sales opportunities.
STEP 1
Your stages
Start with these standard names: your first hires, your board, and your investors already know what they mean. Rename them if you must, and write the exit criteria your team will hold each other to. Add a stage later, when a sales leader shows you a real inflection point in your process, not before.
Stage
What it means
Exit criteria: what has to be true to move forward
Investors get their own pipeline. The same stages work for fundraising (for example: Target, First meeting, Diligence, Term sheet, Closed, Passed), but keep it in a separate pipeline so investor conversations never show up in your sales forecast.
STEP 2
Set it up in your CRM
Pick the CRM you chose in the CRM Selection Scorecard. The steps use your stage names from Step 1. Menus change; if a step doesn't match what you see, the vendor's help article linked at the bottom of each tab has the current path.
Open Deals (the pipeline view). Click the pipeline name at the top, then the pencil icon next to the pipeline to edit it.
Click each stage name and rename it, in order: .Pipedrive tracks won and lost with the Won and Lost buttons on each deal, not as stages, so your last stage is .
Hover over a stage and click + to add one between stages. To remove a default stage you don't need, click Delete stage.Move any deals out first: deleting a stage deletes the deals in it.
Turn on rotting for each stage and set the number of days. Deals that sit longer than that are flagged, which is how you spot the stuck ones.
Optional: set a stage probability for each stage if you want a weighted forecast.
Click Save changes.
For investors, create a second pipeline from the same pipeline menu and give it its own stages.
Open your Deals board. In monday CRM, the Stage column is a Status column, and its labels are your pipeline stages.
Click any cell in the Stage column, then click Edit Labels at the bottom.
Rename the labels to . Add labels you're missing, drag them into order, and pick colors (use one color for open stages, green for , red for ). Click Apply.
A label that's already on a deal can't be deleted. Click the three dots next to it and choose Deactivate instead.
Leave the gray default label blank, as monday recommends, so a brand-new deal doesn't look like it's already at a stage.
Add a Kanban view to the board grouped by the Stage column. Each stage becomes a column you drag deals through, and a stuck deal is easy to see.
For investors, use a separate board with the same structure rather than new labels on the Deals board.
Click the settings (gear) icon in the top navigation.
In the left sidebar, under Data Management, click Objects, then choose Deals.
Open the Pipelines tab and click the name of your deal pipeline.
Click each stage name and rename it to . Use + Add stage for any you're missing and set its Deal probability. Drag stages to reorder them; use the delete icon for defaults you don't need.
Keep a won stage and a lost stage ( and ). HubSpot's sales reports rely on them.
Save. Then use the deals board view and filter by last activity date to find deals that haven't moved.
For investors, create a separate deal pipeline. Depending on your HubSpot plan, additional pipelines may require a paid tier.
Click the gear icon and open Setup. Go to Object Manager › Opportunity › Fields & Relationships › Stage.
Under Opportunity Stages Picklist Values, edit or add (New) a value for each stage: . For each, set the Type (Open, Closed/Won, or Closed/Lost), a Probability, and a Forecast Category.
Deactivate or delete the default stages you don't use (Salesforce ships with about ten). If you delete one that's in use, Salesforce asks which stage to move those records to.
Use Reorder to put the stages in pipeline order.
If your org uses opportunity record types, search Sales Processes in Setup’s Quick Find and make sure the process includes only your stages.
Optional: search Path Settings in Quick Find and turn on a path for Opportunities. Each stage can show your exit criteria as “guidance for success,” right on the deal.
For investors, use a separate record type with its own sales process so investor opportunities stay out of your sales forecast.