# Sales Pipeline
Every sales process has two key stages: generating leads—whether through inbound or outbound efforts—and then qualifying them.
In the initial phase, your ***Leads***** project** might accumulate thousands of unvetted entries. To streamline your pipeline and focus on high-potential opportunities, we recommend creating a separate project called Qualified Leads or simply ***Deals*****.**
This project should house your **Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)**—contacts who have shown genuine interest and are ready for the next step in the sales journey.
### **Leads Pipeline**
The Leads view is used to **capture and track incoming sales opportunities** before they become active deals.
**Key Elements in the Leads View:**
* **Name**: Lead or company name.
* **Assignee**: The team member responsible for following up on the lead.
* **Priority**: Helps in identifying urgency (e.g., High, Low).
* **Dates**: Due date for follow-up or conversion.
* **Contacts**: The person to reach out to in that company.
* **Qualified Lead**: A Yes/No column to tag leads that meet basic qualification criteria.
* **Interested in Service**: Shows which service the lead is interested in (e.g., Graphic Design, Social Media).
* **Region** and **Lead Source**: Helps with segmentation and marketing analysis.
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📌 **Tip**: You can add more custom fields to add more data-points to your leads. **Qualified Lead, Interested in Service, Region** and **Lead Source** are custom fields.
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We highly Recommend **Grouping** by **Due Date** and **Sorting** by **Due Date.** As you take action on a particular lead you would change the due date to reflect the new followup date
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### **Deal Pipeline**
Once a lead is qualified, it can be moved into the **Deals pipeline** which is structured in a Board format to reflect the sales stages.
**Deal Stages Include:**
* **Meeting**: For prospects with scheduled discovery or demo meetings.
* **Proposal**: Prospects who’ve received or are in discussion around a proposal.
* **Deal Won**: Successfully closed deals.
* **Deal Lost**: Leads that didn’t convert.
* **Junk**: Irrelevant or spam leads that are disqualified.
This project may contain custom fields like:
1. **Deal Value:** Represents estimated deal value of the deal
2. **Deal Stage:** As noted above
A lead can be moved from **Leads** project to **Deals** Project as following:
### **Steps to Create this Pipeline**
1. **Create a project named “Leads”**:
* Add custom fields like “Qualified?”, “Lead Source”, “Region”, “Service Interested”, etc.
* Use filters and grouping (e.g., by Due Date) for better clarity.
2. **Create another project named “Deals”**:
* Create custom fields like **Deal Value** and **Deal Stage**
* Deal Stages may be “Meeting”, “Proposal”, “Deal Won”, “Deal Lost”, and “Junk”.
* **Group and Sort by Due Date** to know exactly which deals to act on today
3. **Transition Workflow**:
* As leads become qualified, **move** them from the Leads list to the Deals board for pipeline progression.
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Check out the type of reports you can create from yours sales data [Sales Reports](/crm-and-sales-management/sales-reports.md)
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