Lead · 10% · 3 days
Someone showed interest
Exit when: you've spoken to them and confirmed there's a real need worth exploring.
Free template · Sales pipeline
Your whole pipeline on one sheet.
Six stages, each with an exit rule and a time limit, the only fields worth requiring, and a 20-minute weekly review. It's all below, free. The kit adds an Excel tracker that flags stale and overdue deals, and a stage guide.
- stages
- 6
- deal rows
- 100
Free · Fifteen minutes to load your deals. Five minutes a week to keep it true.
Sales Pipeline Tracker
Every deal, stage and next step on one sheet, with the weighted total worked out.
- Pipeline tracker with summary and export tab XLSX
- Stage definitions and the weekly review PDF
The stages match the defaults in AutomateNexus CRM, and an export tab is laid out as its deal import, so moving later takes one upload.
What a pipeline is for
A pipeline template is three decisions written down: your stages, the fact that moves a deal from one to the next, and how long a deal may sit in each before someone steps in.
Get those right and the pipeline answers three questions every week: what's likely to close, what's stuck, and what needs doing today. If yours can't answer them in a minute, it's a list of hopes, not a pipeline.
The rules
Four rules that keep it honest.
The template enforces what it can. These are on you.
- 01
Every stage has an exit rule
A deal moves when something happened, such as a meeting held or a proposal reviewed, not when it feels closer.
- 02
Every open deal has a next step and a date
No next step means no deal. The tracker flags any date that has passed.
- 03
Every stage has a time limit
A deal past its stage's limit gets a decision: push it forward or close it. Skipping this is the most common mistake.
- 04
Lost deals get a reason
Price, timing, a competitor, no decision. The reasons tell you what to fix.
The stages
Six stages, each with an exit rule.
Rename them to suit your sales process, but keep a rule for leaving each one and a time limit for staying. The probabilities and limits are starting points: replace the probabilities with your own win rates once you have 20 closed deals, and scale the limits to your sales cycle.
Qualified · 25% · 14 days
A real need, a buyer and a timeframe
Exit when: you know the problem, who decides, the rough budget and when they want it solved, and a meeting or demo is booked.
Proposal · 50% · 21 days
They've seen what you'd do and what it costs
Exit when: the proposal has been reviewed with them and they've raised their questions.
Negotiation · 75% · 14 days
Agreeing terms
Exit when: they've said yes in principle and you're settling the final terms, price or paperwork.
Closed won · 100%
Signed or paid
Record the close date and the final value.
Closed lost · 0%
It isn't happening
Record the reason: price, timing, competitor, no decision, or not a fit.
Required fields
Keep the required fields this short.
Every field beyond these has to earn its place. Required fields nobody fills in are how a CRM becomes a chore.
| When | Required |
|---|---|
| On every deal | Value, expected close date, source, owner, and the next step with its date |
| To leave Qualified | The problem in one sentence, and who makes the decision |
| To leave Proposal | The objection or condition standing between them and a signature |
| At close | A reason from a fixed list: why they chose you, or price, timing, competitor, no decision, not a fit |
Two adjustments
Where businesses differ.
Everything else transfers. These two depend on how you sell.
- Step 01
Scale the time limits to your cycle
The limits here fit a 30 to 60 day sales cycle. As a rough rule, give each stage about a third of your median cycle, and hold Proposal tightest: it's where deals go quiet.
- Step 02
Fewer stages for quick sales, more for enterprise
With cycles under two weeks, collapse to Lead, Qualified, Proposal and Closed. For enterprise deals, split Negotiation into commercial terms and legal or procurement: different owners, different limits.
The weekly review
Twenty minutes every Monday.
Same day, same time, same order. The Summary tab has every number you need.
- Step 01
Overdue next steps first
Every flagged deal gets a new step and date, or moves to Closed lost.
- Step 02
Stale deals next
Anything past its stage's time limit: what would move it this week?
- Step 03
Deals closing this month
Confirm the date and the value with the buyer, not with your hopes.
- Step 04
New deals
Check each has a stage, a value and a next step.
- Step 05
The weighted total
Compare it with last week's. Up is good; up because of wishful probabilities is not.
AutomateNexus CRM
When the spreadsheet stops scaling.
AutomateNexus CRM uses the same six stages by default, and the tracker's export tab is laid out as the CRM's deal import, so you can bring every deal across in one upload.
See the automation templates- The Follow Up on Stale Deals automation flags deals with no activity past your threshold and drafts the nudge.
- Deal Stage Change Alerts tell the team whenever a deal moves, with the who and the why.
- The revenue forecast comes from your own closed history, not from typed-in guesses.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Six suits most B2B sales: lead, qualified, proposal, negotiation, closed won and closed lost. Quick transactional sales need about four, and enterprise deals rarely need more than seven. Every stage needs a factual exit rule, or it gets gamed at forecast time.
Setting up the stages and skipping the time limits. The stages describe the happy path; the time limit on each one is what catches the deal sitting quietly in Proposal for two months.
Multiply each open deal's value by the probability for its stage, then add the results. A $10,000 deal at the proposal stage with a 50% probability counts as $5,000. The template does this for every row.
Start with defaults such as 10%, 25%, 50% and 75% for lead, qualified, proposal and negotiation, then replace them with your own history within a quarter or two: of the deals that reached each stage, how many did you win?
Weekly, at the same time, in the same order: overdue next steps, stale deals, deals closing this month, new deals, then the weighted total. Twenty minutes is enough for most small teams.
Yes, for about 30 active deals and one or two people. Move to a CRM when follow-up starts depending on memory, or when two people work the same deal. The tracker's export tab makes that move one upload.
Free · Fifteen minutes to load your deals. Five minutes a week to keep it true.
Sales Pipeline Tracker
Every deal, stage and next step on one sheet, with the weighted total worked out.
- Pipeline tracker with summary and export tab XLSX
- Stage definitions and the weekly review PDF
Your turn
Or let the CRM send it on time.
Templates only work when someone sends them. AutomateNexus CRM keeps every deal's next step in front of you, with Karrie and eight AI agents on every plan.