Lead stages: 11 examples, and how they differ from deal stages

How many lead stages should you have?

Enough that every rep knows exactly what each one means, and few enough that they never stop to think about which to pick. For most teams, that's seven to eleven. A good test: if two stages always lead to the same next action, merge them.

Setup mistakes to avoid

• Stages that describe activity, not progress. "Left voicemail" is a call outcome, not a stage.
• A separate hot/warm/cold field. Reps forget to update it. Let the rating come from the stage.
• Renaming by hand. If renaming a stage means editing every lead, your system is storing text, not stages.
• No written definitions. Add a one-line description to every stage, and repeat it in onboarding.

How Adoptiv does it

Adoptiv's lead stages start with eleven ready-made stages: New Lead, Attempted to Contact, Contacted, Qualified, Not Qualified, Interested, Meeting Scheduled, Proposal Sent, Negotiating, Converted and Lost. Add as many of your own as you need, each with a name, color, description, place in the order and an optional hot, warm or cold rating. Because the rating belongs to the stage, moving a lead re-rates it. Rename a stage and every lead on it follows. Names are unique, so you can't end up with two Qualified stages.

Underneath, every stage rolls up to one of six fixed categories, from new and initial contact through qualification, engagement and sales process to the two outcomes. That keeps reports comparable after the list grows. Once there's a deal, it moves through pipelines whose stages each carry a win probability from 0 to 100, with separate won and lost reasons. Filter any lead list by stage and save it as a saved view.