Opportunities & the pipeline
Stages, weighted forecasting, the board and table views, and stage history.
An opportunity is a deal in flight: an amount, a stage, a close date and a next step, usually attached to an account and a primary contact. Opportunities are what your pipeline and forecast are built from.
The stages
Every opportunity moves along a fixed path. Each stage has a default win likelihood that weights the forecast, and one line on what "good" looks like there:
| Stage | Win likelihood | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | 10% | Confirm there's a real need and you're talking to the right team. |
| Qualified | 30% | Nail down budget, timeline and who signs. |
| Discovery | 50% | Map the problem in their words and agree what success looks like. |
| Proposal | 60% | Get pricing in front of the decision maker and set a decision date. |
| Negotiation | 80% | Close out legal and procurement. Keep a dated next step on the record. |
| Closed won | 100% | Hand off to delivery. |
| Closed lost | 0% | Log why, so the next one lands. |
Lead → Qualified → Discovery → Proposal → Negotiation is the open path. Closed won and Closed lost are terminal — reach them from the path bar or the dedicated "Closed won" / "Closed lost" buttons on the record.
Amount, weighted & forecast
Enter the amount in whole dollars. The weighted (or expected) value is the amount multiplied by the stage's win likelihood — so a $100k deal in Negotiation contributes $80k to the weighted number. Opportunities also roll up into forecast categories a manager reads on a Monday:
| Category | Stages |
|---|---|
| Pipeline | Lead, Qualified — early and unproven. |
| Best case | Discovery, Proposal — live and credible. |
| Commit | Negotiation — very likely to land. |
| Closed | Closed won — banked. |
| Omitted | Closed lost — excluded from the number. |
Moving a deal
- 1Open an opportunity and click the target stage on its path bar — the guidance line updates to tell you what to nail down there.
- 2Or switch Opportunities to the Board layout and use the "Move to …" button on a card to advance it one stage.
- 3Or select several rows in the Table layout and change their stage together (a paid bulk action).
Table vs. board
- Table — sortable columns (amount, stage, close date, updated), filters by stage and owner, and a running count and total of what's showing.
- Board — one column per open stage plus Closed won and Closed lost, cards you can advance a stage at a time, with a value sum per column.
Stage history
Every stage change is recorded automatically. Open an opportunity's Related tab to see its full stage history — each transition, in order, with the age in its current stage. This history is what makes the conversion and aging reports honest: a deal that skipped a stage still counts correctly.
The Home dashboard flags open deals that haven't changed stage in three weeks or more under "Needs a nudge". A dated next step on every open deal is the simplest way to stay out of that list.
How is the weighted pipeline calculated?
Amount × the stage's default win likelihood, summed across open opportunities. It's a quick, consistent forecast — not a promise.
Can I change the win likelihood for a stage?
The per-stage likelihoods are the built-in defaults that weight the forecast. Where you want a sharper number, lean on the Reports view, which shows both raw and weighted amounts side by side.
What counts as a stalled deal?
An open opportunity that hasn't changed stage in 21 days or more. Home surfaces the worst offenders; the Aging report buckets all of them by how long they've sat.