Sales pipeline

The set of potential deals a company is pursuing, usually organised by stage from first contact to signed contract.

Example

3,000,000 of deals spread across discovery, proposal and negotiation stages.

Important

A headline pipeline value counts every deal at full value, which overstates expected revenue.

Related terms

• Weighted pipeline — The value of a sales pipeline after multiplying each deal or stage by its probability of closing.
• Win rate — The share of sales opportunities a company closes successfully over a period.

Lessons that explain it

• A pipeline is worth its probability, not its headline — Sales pipelines are presented at full value. Weighting deals by stage, checking historical conversion and removing stale deals shows how much revenue is realistically coming. (10 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary