A sales pipeline is the single most important asset in any B2B sales organization. It is the structured system that tracks every potential deal from first contact to closed-won, giving you visibility into your revenue trajectory and the ability to forecast with confidence. Without a well-defined pipeline, you are flying blind.
Yet many B2B companies -- especially startups and scaling teams -- operate without a clearly defined pipeline. Deals are tracked inconsistently, stages are undefined, metrics are not measured, and forecasting is based on gut feeling rather than data. This guide walks you through building a B2B sales pipeline from scratch, whether you are a solo founder making your first sales or a VP of Sales building a team.
Step 1: Define Your Pipeline Stages
Pipeline stages should reflect the actual steps a deal goes through from first contact to close. They should be defined by objective, verifiable criteria -- not subjective assessments. Here is a proven 6-stage framework that works for most B2B sales organizations:
Stage 1: Prospect Identified
A company or individual has been identified as matching your ICP but no outreach has occurred yet. They are on your list but you have not made contact.
Entry criteria: Matches ICP firmographic and demographic criteria.
Stage 2: Outreach Initiated
You have made initial contact through email, phone, LinkedIn, or another channel. No response yet.
Entry criteria: At least one outreach attempt completed.
Stage 3: Engaged
The prospect has responded positively and agreed to a meeting or further conversation. This is the first real pipeline stage because there is mutual interest.
Entry criteria: Prospect has responded and a meeting or call is scheduled.
Stage 4: Discovery Completed
You have held a discovery meeting and confirmed that the prospect has a real need, budget, authority, and timeline. They are a qualified opportunity.
Entry criteria: Discovery call completed. BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) or your chosen qualification framework confirmed.
Stage 5: Proposal or Demo Delivered
You have presented a proposal, demo, or formal pitch. The prospect is actively evaluating your solution.
Entry criteria: Formal proposal or demo delivered. Prospect has all information needed to make a decision.
Stage 6: Negotiation and Close
Terms are being discussed. Legal, procurement, or other stakeholders may be involved. The deal is in the final stage before a decision.
Entry criteria: Active negotiation on pricing, terms, or contract details.
You can also add Closed-Won and Closed-Lost as terminal stages for tracking purposes. The key principle is that every stage must have clear, objective entry criteria that prevent deals from being advanced prematurely.
Step 2: Assign Win Probabilities to Each Stage
Each pipeline stage should have an associated win probability that reflects historical conversion rates. This enables accurate revenue forecasting. Here are typical benchmarks, but calibrate these to your own data as it accumulates:
- Prospect Identified: 5 percent
- Outreach Initiated: 10 percent
- Engaged: 20 percent
- Discovery Completed: 40 percent
- Proposal Delivered: 60 percent
- Negotiation: 80 percent
These probabilities are used to calculate your weighted pipeline value. If you have a deal worth 100,000 dollars in the Proposal Delivered stage, its weighted value is 60,000 dollars. Sum the weighted values across all deals to get your expected revenue.
Step 3: Calculate Your Pipeline Math
Pipeline math is the foundation of predictable revenue. You need to know how many prospects you need at each stage to hit your revenue targets. Work backwards from your goal:
- Revenue target: How much do you need to close this quarter?
- Average deal size: What is your typical closed deal worth?
- Close rate: What percentage of qualified opportunities convert to closed deals?
- Meetings-to-qualified ratio: What percentage of meetings become qualified opportunities?
- Outreach-to-meeting ratio: How many outreach attempts does it take to book one meeting?
Example: If you need 500,000 dollars in quarterly revenue with a 50,000-dollar average deal size, you need 10 closed deals. If your close rate is 25 percent, you need 40 qualified opportunities. If your meeting-to-qualified ratio is 50 percent, you need 80 meetings. If your outreach-to-meeting ratio is 2 percent, you need 4,000 outreach touches per quarter.
This math tells you exactly how much activity your team needs to execute to hit your number. No guessing required.
Step 4: Choose Your Pipeline Tools
You need tools to track, manage, and analyze your pipeline. The core stack includes:
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management): HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive are the most common choices. Your CRM is the system of record for every deal in your pipeline.
- Sales engagement platform: Tools like Outreach, Salesloft, or Apollo manage your outreach sequences across email, phone, and LinkedIn.
- Data provider: ZoomInfo, Apollo, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator for building targeted prospect lists.
- Analytics and reporting: Your CRM's built-in reporting plus tools like Gong, Clari, or custom dashboards for pipeline analytics.
Start simple. A CRM and a data provider are the minimum viable stack. You can add complexity as your team and pipeline grow.
Step 5: Establish Pipeline Hygiene Practices
A pipeline is only useful if the data in it is accurate. Pipeline rot -- deals sitting in stages too long, ghost deals that will never close, inflated deal values -- is the enemy of accurate forecasting. Implement these hygiene practices:
- Weekly pipeline reviews: Review every deal in your pipeline weekly. Is it still active? Has it advanced? Should it be moved backward or closed-lost?
- Stage-aging alerts: Set alerts for deals that sit in any stage longer than the average time-in-stage for that phase. A deal that has been in Discovery for 3 months when the average is 2 weeks likely needs attention or removal.
- Mandatory next steps: Every deal should have a defined next step with a date. Deals without next steps are dead deals.
- Regular pipeline scrubbing: Once per month, audit your entire pipeline and remove deals that are not actively progressing.
Step 6: Measure and Optimize
Track these pipeline metrics to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance:
- Pipeline velocity: How fast deals move through your pipeline. Calculated as (number of deals x average deal size x win rate) divided by average sales cycle length.
- Stage conversion rates: What percentage of deals advance from each stage to the next? Low conversion between specific stages reveals where your process breaks down.
- Average deal size: Track over time to spot trends. Is your deal size growing or shrinking?
- Sales cycle length: How long does it take from first touch to close? Breaking this down by segment or deal size reveals optimization opportunities.
- Pipeline coverage ratio: Your total pipeline value divided by your revenue target. A 3x to 4x coverage ratio is typically needed to hit your number.
At Dewx.io, we help B2B companies build not just the top of the pipeline through our appointment setting services -- the meetings and qualified opportunities -- but also the systems and processes that ensure those opportunities convert into revenue. Building a pipeline from scratch is not complicated, but it requires discipline. Define your stages, do the math, choose your tools, maintain your data, and let the metrics guide your optimization. The companies that treat their pipeline as a system rather than a wish list are the ones that hit their numbers consistently. Reach out if you need help building yours.