Sales pipeline

All your live opportunities, organised by stage, with a value and an expected close date.

Example

Discovery → demo → proposal → negotiation → closed.

A deal with no next meeting booked is not in your pipeline, whatever the spreadsheet says.

Lead — Someone who might become a customer but has not yet been qualified.
Qualified lead — A lead confirmed to have the problem, the budget and the authority to act.
Sales cycle — The time from first contact to signed contract.
ACV (Annual Contract Value) — The annualised value of one customer contract.

Founder-led sales for people who hate selling — Selling early is not persuasion. It is finding out whether this person has the problem badly enough to pay — and that is a question, not a pitch. (12 min)
Running a discovery call — A structure for the first real sales conversation, and how to end it with a next step that actually exists. (12 min)
Closing and following up — Most deals are lost to silence, not to a no. Asking clearly and following up systematically wins more than any technique. (10 min)