Pipeline Phases and Stages
The rules that govern how contacts progress through your customer journey
What It Is
A pipeline stage is a defined position in your customer journey. Each stage belongs to one of the four phases (FIND, WIN, KEEP, GROW) and has a set of properties that define what it means for a contact to be at that point:
Name — A descriptive label for the stage. Examples: "Lead Ingested," "MQL (Interest Shown)," "SQL (Meeting Booked)," "Proposal Sent," "Onboarding," "Active & Adopted."
Phase — Which journey phase this stage belongs to. Determines the SI cadence, QC autonomy, and color coding.
Description — What this stage represents in the customer journey. Written by the AI during pipeline creation and editable by you.
Entry Criteria — What must happen before a contact enters this stage. Examples: "Contact has submitted a form and been enriched" or "Meeting has been booked and confirmed." These criteria guide both manual stage assignments and automatic transitions.
Exit Criteria — What must happen before a contact moves to the next stage. Examples: "Demo completed and interest confirmed" or "Proposal accepted and contract signed." Exit criteria define what "done" looks like for each stage.
Fulfillment — Actions or modules that must be completed at this stage. The platform supports fulfillment through proposals, invoices, contracts, forms, payments, document uploads, external webhooks, onboarding flows, subscriptions, calendar bookings, and custom modules.
When the AI builds your pipeline, it populates all of these properties based on your brand, offerings, business model, and the process description you provided. You can refine any of them afterward.
Why It Matters
Entry and exit criteria are what make a pipeline actionable rather than aspirational.
In most CRMs, pipeline stages are just labels. "Qualified" means whatever the salesperson thinks it means. "Proposal Sent" might mean the proposal was emailed, or it might mean the contact glanced at a landing page. There is no standard, and reporting becomes unreliable.
In Zyntro, entry and exit criteria create objective definitions. A contact enters "SQL (Meeting Booked)" when a meeting is actually booked and confirmed — not when someone guesses they are ready. A contact exits "Proposal Sent" when the proposal is viewed and a response is received — not when enough time has passed.
These criteria serve three purposes:
1. They guide SI. When SI evaluates a contact, it reads the stage’s criteria to understand what success looks like. SI’s communication is tailored to move the contact toward the exit criteria.
2. They enable automatic transitions. When a contact’s behavior matches exit criteria (form filled, meeting booked, proposal viewed), the system can move them to the next stage without human intervention.
3. They make reporting meaningful. Pipeline metrics like conversion rate, stage duration, and bottleneck analysis are only useful when stages have consistent definitions.
How It Works
A Typical AI-Generated Pipeline
For a consultative business, the AI might produce this structure:
*FIND Phase:*
- Lead Ingested — Contact has entered the system through any channel. Entry: new contact created. Exit: initial engagement received (email opened, form filled, or website visit).
- Engaging — Contact has shown initial signs of life. Entry: responded to first outreach. Exit: enough qualification data to assess fit.
*WIN Phase:*
- MQL (Interest Shown) — Contact has demonstrated interest beyond curiosity. Entry: multiple engagement signals. Exit: meeting or discovery call booked.
- SQL (Meeting Booked) — Contact is in active evaluation. Entry: meeting confirmed. Exit: proposal requested or presented.
- Proposal Sent — Contact is evaluating a specific offer. Entry: proposal delivered. Exit: decision received.
*KEEP Phase:*
- Onboarding — New customer being set up. Entry: deal closed. Exit: onboarding complete and product/service adopted.
- Active & Adopted — Customer is using the product/service regularly. Entry: onboarding complete. Exit: relationship stabilized.
- Stable & Retained — Long-term customer with consistent engagement. Entry: 90+ days active. Exit: expansion opportunity identified or churn risk detected.
*GROW Phase:*
- Expansion Identified — Customer is a candidate for upsell or cross-sell. Entry: high engagement + usage patterns suggest readiness. Exit: expansion offer presented.
- Advocacy Activated — Customer is willing to refer or provide testimonials. Entry: high satisfaction signals. Exit: referral or testimonial completed.
- At Risk — Customer showing disengagement. Entry: declining engagement score. Exit: re-engaged or churned.
- Churned — Customer has left. Entry: confirmed cancellation or prolonged inactivity.
This is generated automatically — the number of stages, their names, and their criteria are all derived from your specific business context.
