$ man pipeline

Pipeline

The stages a deal moves through from open to close. Discovery → Demo → Proposal → Negotiation → Closed Won / Closed Lost.

by Shawn Tenam

Pipeline is how you track revenue. It's not enough to know "we have 50 deals." You need to know where they are, how long they've been there, and what the next step is. Pipeline visibility is the difference between "we're busy" and "we're forecasting $200k closing this quarter."

I don't manage pipeline manually — that's the AE's job. But I do care about pipeline creation. When a qualified lead from Clay moves to SQL and an AE opens a deal, that deal enters the pipeline. I track "deals created from web reveal" vs "deals created from cold outbound" as separate sources so I know which workflows are actually driving revenue. Pipeline isn't a GTM engineer's daily tool, but it's the end goal. Everything upstream (qualification, enrichment, routing, personalization) exists to fill the pipeline with real opportunities.