A sales pipeline is a visual framework that illustrates the amount of business a company tries to win over a period of time including how many leads the company has, which stage each one is in, and what the company needs to do for each to win the deal. Sales pipeline management is the technique of using a sales pipeline to manage sales. This is most often done with a CRM software built especially for this purpose.

Using a sales pipeline management process will help a company manage leads, tasks, and performance for each member of the sales staff and for the whole team under one roof.

Knowing exactly which stage each lead is in will allow the company to forecast sales numbers in the short-term and estimate incoming cash flow.