Working an opportunity through stages
Every opportunity travels a defined path, usually from qualification to discovery, evaluation, proposal, and close. The job is to advance each deal deliberately instead of letting it drift, which means a clear next step on every open opportunity and an owner accountable for its stage, amount, close date, and next action.
Stages only mean something when they are consistent. When one rep marks a deal "proposal" after sending a quote and another marks "proposal" after a verbal maybe, the pipeline stops being comparable and the forecast built on it breaks.
Exit criteria keep stages honest
Exit criteria are the objective conditions that must be true before a deal moves forward. To leave discovery, the economic buyer is identified and the decision process is mapped. To leave evaluation, technical validation is complete and pricing is agreed. Criteria like these replace optimism with evidence. A deal does not reach commit because a rep feels good about it. It reaches commit because it cleared the bar.
This matters because most deals close for less than their recorded value. A pipeline can carry an average deal size of $80,000 while closed-won deals average $40,000. Exit criteria surface that gap at the stage boundary, not in the final week of the quarter when nothing can be done about it.
Clean data the forecast can trust
Clean does not mean perfect. It means consistent. As long as your data is consistent, you can predict from it even when it is messy. What breaks a forecast is a record that no longer matches reality: a close date three quarters stale, an amount nobody has updated since the deal was created.
ORM applies a 12-month rule for most customers. An opportunity with no meaningful activity, defined as a change in stage, close date, or amount, is treated as aging, and at least 10% of the average pipeline has not been touched in 12 months. ORM groups each opportunity with a machine learning model and predicts a close-timing curve for the group, with most groups resolving before week 12. The earliest sign a deal is in trouble is the absence of any signal at all. When nothing on the record changes, that silence is the warning.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between opportunity management and pipeline management?
Opportunity management works one deal at a time. Pipeline management works the whole portfolio. Opportunity management keeps each record accurate, with the correct stage, a realistic close date, a current amount, and a defined next step. Pipeline management aggregates those records to answer questions about coverage and forecast health. Clean opportunity management is what makes pipeline management trustworthy.
What are stage exit criteria?
Exit criteria are the objective conditions that must be true before an opportunity advances to the next stage, such as a confirmed budget or a mapped decision process. They replace rep optimism with evidence, so a stage means the same thing across every deal and every rep. Without exit criteria, stage becomes a guess and the forecast inherits that guess.
When is a sales opportunity considered stale?
ORM applies a 12-month rule for most customers. An opportunity with no meaningful activity, defined as a change in stage, close date, or amount, is treated as aging. Across ORM customers, at least 10% of pipeline has not been touched in 12 months. Stale opportunities inflate pipeline coverage and distort the forecast.
What is the earliest sign an opportunity is at risk?
The absence of any signal. When nothing on the deal changes, no activity and no updated fields, that silence is the earliest warning. The strongest slippage signal is a rep pushing the close date. A deal that slips from one quarter to the next is less likely to close, even when it sits in commit.
Put these metrics to work
ORM builds custom revenue forecast models that turn concepts like opportunity management into prescriptive action for your team.
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