Early-stageCybersecurity
Nine stages, three pipelines, and a stage gate that pushes deals back
Renewal notifications live at 120/90/60/30 days
Renewal notifications live at 120/90/60/30 days
The company ran its whole go-to-market inside a lightweight CRM with a structure that had been improvised as it went: overlapping and ambiguous stages, a separate custom leads object sitting beside the standard records, duplicate companies and contacts, and lead intake routed manually through whoever noticed it first.
Ran a stage-architecture workshop and defined a single nine-stage lifecycle running from lead through MQL, SAL, SQL and opportunity to closed-won, onboarding, adopted and renewal, with entry and exit criteria written in the team's own words rather than imported from a template they would not recognise.
Implemented new-business, renewal/expansion and proof-of-value pipelines as kanban views over the same lifecycle, so different motions share stage definitions instead of each inventing its own vocabulary.
Built stage-gate validation workflows that return a deal to its previous stage and post a chat alert when required fields are missing, enforcement layered on top of a CRM with no native gating, so the process is felt rather than documented.
Added automated stage timestamps, without which cycle-time and stage-velocity reporting are not possible at all.
Rebuilt the closed-won to renewal automation that the pipeline re-architecture had broken, with renewal notifications firing at 120, 90, 60 and 30 days.
Documented a rules-of-engagement guide in quick-reference and full versions, an account-disposition matrix for terminal stages, and lifecycle training material aimed at onboarding new sellers.
Ran duplicate analysis across contacts and companies, merged records while preserving history, configured duplicate-prevention rules so the problem does not regrow, standardised key field formats, and documented data-governance standards.
Renewal notifications live at 120/90/60/30 days
One nine-stage lifecycle live. A single lifecycle was defined and implemented live across people, companies and deals in the CRM, replacing the improvised stage set.
Three pipelines with enforced gates. New-business, renewal/expansion and proof-of-value pipelines went live as kanban views with chat-notified stage-gate validation that reverts non-compliant deals.
