CRM sales pipelines

CRM & Sales Pipelines

When to Use

Use when building or modifying CRM capabilities: lead capture and qualification, company/account hierarchies, contacts, deal/opportunity pipelines, activity logging, follow-up tasks, or customer timelines.

1. Lead $\rightarrow$ Account + Contact + Opportunity Conversion

Keep unqualified inbound leads separate from clean Account/Contact master data until qualification:

• Atomic Lead Conversion:
  • Converting a qualified Lead must execute atomically inside a transaction:
    1. Match an existing Account (or create a new Account) and link/create the Contact.
    2. Optionally create the initial Opportunity linked to that Account and primary Contact.
    3. Re-parent or link all historical activities, notes, and tasks from the Lead to the resulting Account/Contact/Opportunity so zero interaction history is lost.
    4. Mark the Lead as converted with immutable pointers (converted_account_id, converted_contact_id, converted_opportunity_id, converted_at) to prevent double conversion.

2. Sales Pipelines, Stage Gates & Win/Loss Discipline

• Configurable Pipelines & Ordered Stages:
  • Support multiple pipelines where needed (e.g., New Business, Renewal / Expansion, Partner Channel), each with ordered stages (Qualification $\rightarrow$ Discovery $\rightarrow$ Proposal / Quote $\rightarrow$ Negotiation $\rightarrow$ Closed Won / Closed Lost).
• Stage Exit/Entry Preconditions (Stage Gates):
  • Enforce required business fields before advancing stages (e.g., moving to Proposal requires an attached Quote or estimated amount > 0 and expected_close_date; moving to Closed Lost requires a structured loss_reason).
• Stage History & Velocity Tracking:
  • Record an immutable opportunity_stage_history entry (from_stage_id, to_stage_id, changed_by_id, changed_at, amount_snapshot) on every transition so stage duration, conversion funnel rates, and pipeline slippage can be calculated accurately rather than overwritten.

3. Activities, Tasks, Next-Action Enforcement & Customer 360 Timeline

• Unified Activity Ledger: Track calls, emails, meetings, notes, and system events (quote_sent, stage_changed, order_placed) in a chronological timeline queryable at both the Contact/Opportunity level and rolled up to the parent Account.
• Preventing Orphaned Deals (Follow-Up Cadence):
  • Surface or enforce "next scheduled task / follow-up date" on open opportunities so active deals do not silently stall without an owner action.
• Territory & Ownership Handoff:
  • When reassigning an Account (SDR $\rightarrow$ Account Executive $\rightarrow$ Customer Success Manager), define explicit rules for cascading ownership to open opportunities and pending follow-up tasks while preserving historical activity attribution.