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Sales & Retail vocabulary · Sales Process & Pipeline

Sales pipeline

Meaning in sales & retail, with examples

/ˈseɪlz ˌpaɪplaɪn/nounCore term

In sales & retail, sales pipeline means: All the potential deals a salesperson or team is working on, arranged by stage from first contact to signed contract, so you can see what is likely to close.

In Turkish: satış hattı, satış fırsatları havuzu

How it is used

Used daily in B2B sales meetings, CRM tools and forecasts. You build, fill, review or clean up your pipeline. When managers ask how much is in the pipeline, they mean the total value of open deals.

Example sentences

  1. We have about 2 million in our sales pipeline, but only a third of it is likely to close this quarter.

  2. Please update your sales pipeline in the CRM before Monday's review.

Common collocations

  • build a pipeline
  • pipeline review
  • healthy pipeline
  • move a deal through the pipeline
  • pipeline value
  • sales funnelA model that shows the stages buyers go through, from first hearing about a product to buying it, with fewer people at each stage, like the shape of a funnel.
  • dealAn agreement to buy or sell something, or a sales opportunity that a seller is working on and hopes to win.
  • opportunityA qualified potential sale that is being actively worked on, with an estimated value and an expected closing date in the CRM.
  • sales forecastAn estimate of how much a person, team or company will sell in a coming period, based on the pipeline, past results and market conditions.
  • CRMCustomer relationship management: software where a company records its contacts, leads, deals and conversations with customers in one place.

More terms: Sales Process & Pipeline

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