Zodiac Tech CRM Docs

Set up your sales process

Wizard step 6 — create your pipeline and stages with a ready-made industry template, or build your own.

client admin manager Easy ⏱ 5 min Updated 2026-10-05

Set up your sales process

This is wizard step 6: "How should your team handle new leads?". A sales process is a pipeline (the overall journey) made of stages (the steps a lead moves through — for example New → Contacted → Visit booked → Won / Lost). Every lead card sits in a stage, and moving cards through stages is how your team works the board.

Who this is for

  • Workspace owners and admins during setup.
  • Managers who want to reshape the pipeline after setup.

Difficulty: Easy · Time: 3–5 minutes · Prerequisites: earlier wizard steps are done (or at minimum, you are logged in as owner/admin).

Step by step

1. Choose how to build it

The step offers two paths:

Button What it does
Create my sales process Installs a ready-made pipeline and stages for your industry (based on the industry chosen in step 2) — you can edit it any time
Set it up myself Opens the Pipelines area so you can create your own pipeline and stages from scratch

  1. Click Create my sales process for the fast path.

  2. What happens: a pipeline with several stages is created for your workspace, based on your industry pack.

  3. Expected result: the step shows your stages as a coloured flow, for example:

    ● New  →  ● Contacted  →  ● Follow-up  →  ● Won
                       ↘  ● Lost

2. Review and edit stages

  1. If a pipeline already exists, the step shows "Your sales process is ready. Leads move through these steps:" with the stage list and an Edit link.
  2. Click Edit (or Set it up myself) to open the Pipelines area, where you can:
    • rename stages to match how your team actually talks,
    • add or remove stages,
    • reorder stages into the real progression,
    • give each stage a colour for the board.
  3. Expected result: the step settles as done once your largest pipeline has at least two stages.

Why two stages minimum A single-stage pipeline cannot show movement — no "where is this lead now?" state, no Kanban columns to drag between, and no funnel reporting. The wizard deliberately requires 2+ stages before the step counts as complete.

3. Where stages are used

  • Lead board (Kanban) — one column per stage; drag cards to move leads.
  • Lead detail — change a lead's stage from its record.
  • Reports — funnel and bottleneck reports are built on stage transitions.
  • Automations — rules can trigger when a lead enters a stage.

Expected result

  • Your workspace has a pipeline with at least two stages, visible in the wizard as a stage flow.
  • New leads start in the first stage; your team moves them along as they work.

Common mistakes

  • Leaving the default stage names. "Stage 1" tells your team nothing. Rename to your real process in the Edit screen.
  • Building a 12-stage pipeline on day one. Start with 4–6 stages; you can add stages later.
  • Deleting down to one stage. The step (and sensible reporting) needs at least two.
  • Confusing stages with lead status. Status (new, contacted, won, lost) is the lead-level state; stages are the board columns inside your pipeline. They work together.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Likely cause Fix
Step won't complete after creating stages The largest pipeline still has fewer than 2 stages Add at least one more stage
"Create my sales process" produced nothing Your chosen industry was Other (no pack to install) Build your pipeline manually via Set it up myself
You already had a pipeline and wanted the template Industry packs never overwrite an existing pipeline Edit your existing pipeline, or create a second one
Stages look wrong for your business You picked a different industry in step 2 Edit the stages to match reality; the pipeline itself is fully editable

Technical details

  • Tables: pipelines and lead_pipeline_stages (per-tenant, scoped by tenant_id).
  • Wizard action: installSalesProcess installs the pipeline for the chosen industry via App\Services\IndustryPackService; the management UI is the Pipelines resource (App\Filament\Resources\PipelineResource).
  • Resolver condition (sales_process): the workspace's largest pipeline has ≥ 2 stages.
  • Industry packs define stages (with colours) in config/industry_packs/*.php; installation never overwrites an existing pipeline.

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