If you’ve been using “pipeline” and “funnel” to mean the same thing, you might want to pay attention.

If you’re a company with a product or service to sell, securing customers is your bread and butter. But once you get a prospect in the door, how you interact with them and measure your (and their) progress through their buyer journey makes all the difference. 

That’s where the sales funnel and sales pipeline come in. Sales pipeline and sales funnel both describe the flow of prospects through a sale, but there’s an important difference between the two commonly confused terms. While the definition and meaning of a sales pipeline versus that of a sales funnel may seem similar, there are some fundamental differences.

• What is sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is a set of stages that a prospect moves through as they progress from a new lead to a customer. Once each pipeline stage is completed, the prospect is advanced to the next stage.

Think of the stages that your prospects need to go through, starting from them discovering you to them becoming a closed deal. You might have a vague mental map at this point. That map, when clarified and constructed properly, is what makes the sales pipeline. 

The important stages of a sales pipeline

Here are the different stages of your sales pipeline that your prospect goes through. Please note that this is not set in stone, and they can vary depending on your business, but at the core, it will be about these sales pipeline stages:

• Qualification

• Meeting

• Proposal

• Closing

• Nurture

• Lead management

• Supporting CRO

• Helping individual progression

• Boosting customer experience
  
  
  

• What is sales funnel?

Now, moving on to the fun(nel) part. 

It is a sales funnel represents the quantity and conversion rates of prospects through your pipeline stages. It’s called a “funnel” because of its shape: wide at the top as prospects enter, then increasingly narrow as they are disqualified or decide not to buy.

The funnel is often divided into three main sections – top, middle, and bottom – but can be broken down differently within these, so it may not always feature all of the six stages outlined below. A common, simpler version shows AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

The important stages of a sales funnel

• Awareness

• Discovery

• Evaluation

• Intent

• Purchase

• Loyalty

We hope this guide will help you never confuse these two common different sales terms. With a clearer understanding of these terms, you are now in a better position to create sales processes that align with your sales pipeline as well as the sales funnel. 

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Drospecta is your go to tool that AI automates prospecting, engages high-intent leads, and books meetings, so you can focus on closing deals, not chasing them. Book a demo to know the dif-fer-rence.