Use four active stages, then Won and Lost
A practical default B2B deal pipeline has four active stages — Qualified, Demo, Proposal, and Negotiation — followed by separate Won and Lost outcomes. Move a deal when the next stage’s entry condition is true: fit is confirmed, a meeting is booked, a proposal is delivered, or commercial terms are under active review. Keep the set small. Add a stage later only when it marks a meaningful change in buyer commitment or requires a different action from the sales team.
This is a recommended starting configuration, not a preset that every team must use.
About the author: Sean Mahoney is the founder of DealFlowPlugin.com. He builds Deal Flow and runs Mautic in his own work.
The sequence is easy to scan on a board:
Qualified → Demo → Proposal → Negotiation → Won or Lost
The stage names matter less than their entry conditions. Everyone should be able to look at a deal, apply the same rule, and reach the same stage.
What each deal stage means
Qualified
Meaning: There is a real business need, a plausible fit, and a person willing to take part in the buying process.
Move to Demo when: The buyer agrees to a scheduled discovery call, product review, or workflow demonstration.
Demo
Meaning: The team is validating the buyer’s workflow, desired outcome, constraints, and decision process.
Move to Proposal when: The written scope and commercial offer have been delivered to the buyer.
Proposal
Meaning: A specific written offer has been delivered to the buyer and is awaiting a decision or requested changes.
Move to Negotiation when: The buyer is actively discussing changes to scope, terms, procurement, legal review, or approval steps.
Negotiation
Meaning: The remaining work concerns the terms of a defined purchase, not whether there is a problem worth solving.
Move to Won when: The buyer gives the commitment your team has defined as closed. Move to Lost when the buyer confirms that the purchase will not proceed.
Won
Meaning: The deal met your team’s written close criterion, such as an accepted agreement or another explicit customer commitment.
Do not enter it for: Positive language, an informal verbal signal, or an unsigned document that still needs approval.
Lost
Meaning: The buyer declined, chose another direction, or met your team’s documented close-out rule after follow-up.
Record with it: Add a short note with the known reason and the context another person would need later.
Negotiation is not mandatory. If a buyer accepts the proposal without requesting changes, move the deal directly from Proposal to Won. A pipeline should describe buyer progress, not force every deal through an activity checklist.
Worked example: one deal through the pipeline
A Mautic implementation project
- Qualified: An operations lead confirms a need to connect marketing activity to a sales pipeline and identifies who will evaluate the project.
- Demo: The evaluator schedules a workflow review with the sales team.
- Proposal: After the review, the seller delivers the written scope and commercial offer for the agreed use case.
- Negotiation: Procurement asks for a change to the proposed terms and names the final approval step.
- Won: The buyer completes the commitment the seller uses as its closed criterion.
If the buyer had declined after the demo, the deal would move from Demo to Lost. There is no reason to push it through Proposal and Negotiation first. Direct moves preserve the actual story of the deal.
How stage history appears on the deal record
Deal Flow records a stage move in the deal’s history as an audit event tied to that deal. The event carries the previous stage, new stage, and timestamp. Read together, those events show the structured sequence of stage changes.
Keep context such as why the buyer advanced, stalled, or declined in a deal note alongside the audit event. The event captures the field change; the note captures the human explanation.
Product references: Mautic deal timeline guide and Deal Flow API reference: move a deal to another stage, verified September 2, 2026.
How to adapt the default without making it vague
Start with the six stages above and watch for a repeated handoff that changes what the team must do next. That is the moment a new stage may help. A separate Legal Review stage can make sense when legal work has a distinct owner and queue; it adds noise when it is merely one task inside Negotiation.
- Name a buyer milestone, not a seller to-do. “Demo” qualifies when it means the buyer has agreed to the scheduled review. “Send follow-up email” belongs on a task list.
- Write one entry condition. A stage should have an observable threshold rather than a feeling such as “looks promising.”
- Keep Won and Lost distinct. They represent different outcomes and should not share one generic closed column.
- Allow direct moves. A well-defined pipeline can still support a deal that skips Negotiation or closes from an earlier stage.
Deal Flow lets a pipeline contain an ordered set of configurable stages. Each stage has a name, an open, won, or lost type, a probability, and a position in the pipeline. The recommended set on this page is one way to configure those fields.
Product reference: Deal Flow pipeline documentation, verified September 2, 2026.
Do not confuse these deal stages with the lifecycle stage attached to a Mautic contact. The records answer different questions. Read Mautic stage vs pipeline stage for the data-model distinction.
Put a clear deal pipeline inside Mautic
Deal Flow adds configurable deal stages, a pipeline board, and deal activity to the Mautic instance your team already uses.
See Deal Flow PricingFrequently asked questions
What are good default deal stages for a Mautic pipeline?
Start with Qualified, Demo, Proposal, and Negotiation as active stages, then use Won and Lost as separate outcomes. Treat this as a recommended starting configuration and adapt the names or criteria to match how your team sells.
When should a deal move to the next stage?
Move a deal when its next stage's entry condition is true, not because a task happened or a certain number of days passed. The condition should reflect a change in buyer commitment and tell the team what action comes next.
Do Won and Lost need separate stages?
Yes. Separate Won and Lost stages make the final outcome explicit. Enter Won after the buyer gives the commitment your team defines as closed, and enter Lost after a confirmed no or your documented close-out rule.
Where does Deal Flow show stage history?
Deal Flow records each stage move in the deal's history as an audit event. The event carries the previous stage, new stage, and timestamp. Read those events alongside deal notes for the structured transition and the human context.