Sales pipeline stages for manufacturing

Stages as statuses, not columns

Ask most sales teams to name their pipeline stages and you will get a list of Kanban columns — labels someone invented, a card dragged from one to the next. That works until you ask a harder question: which document is this deal, and what state is it actually in? In a manufacturing business the answer has to be precise, because the same record that starts as an enquiry becomes the quotation you are legally bound to, and then the order the factory builds and accounts invoices. A stage is not a mood; it is a status on a document.

That is exactly how Fast CRM models the pipeline. It is document-and-status driven: every enquiry, quotation and order is a real commercial document carrying item lines, drawings, terms, references and a full status history, and each pipeline stage is a defined status code that document moves through. This page is the reference guide to those stages — what each one means, which document and status code it is, the exit criteria that let it advance, and the follow-up view where sales chases it. If you want the narrative of how a deal travels end to end, read the companion guide on the enquiry-to-order process; this one is the stage-by-stage dictionary that sits beside it.

The six-stage manufacturing pipeline

The backbone is six stages, mapping to the pre-sales status codes 31 to 35 plus the raw lead. Each advances only when its exit criteria are met, and each has a dedicated view on the parameterised follow-up dashboard so nothing sits ageing without a next action.

The rest of this guide takes each stage in turn. Every stage entry follows the same four-part shape: what it means, what document and status it is, the exit criteria that let it advance, and the follow-up view where it lives.

Stage 1 — Lead (document LD)

What it means. A lead is a raw, unqualified prospect — a name that came off an exhibition badge, a website form, a cold call or a referral, before anyone has confirmed there is a genuine requirement behind it. It is deliberately lightweight: you do not yet know what they want to buy, only that they might.

What document / status it is. The lead is captured as an LD document. It sits ahead of the numbered pre-sales status band; its job is to hold the prospect and its source until it is qualified. Field staff can raise one from a phone, which matters when a lead is generated at a customer site.

Exit criteria. A lead advances when it is qualified into a genuine requirement — a real part, quantity or project to price. At that point it becomes an Enquiry, carrying its source forward so you always know where the eventual order originated. Leads that never qualify are simply closed off the lead list.

Follow-up view. The Followup Dashboard – Lead lists open leads with ageing, so a prospect is not left uncalled for weeks. Qualification and capture at this stage are handled by Lead & Enquiry Capture.

Stage 2 — Enquiry Received (status 31, document EQ)

What it means. An enquiry is a qualified customer request for a price: a concrete "what will you charge to make this?" It carries the enquired items, quantities, any drawings or specifications, and — critically — the source the enquiry arrived through, so later you can measure which channels produce real business.

What document / status it is. Capturing an enquiry creates an EQ document at status 31 – Enquiry Received. This is the first numbered pipeline stage and the true top of the funnel for conversion reporting. From here the whole chain is reconstructable, because the quotation and order will reference this enquiry by number.

Exit criteria. An enquiry moves on once it has been logged completely enough to assess — customer, items and requirement clear. It then advances to feasibility. If it is a non-starter it can be regretted at status 36 rather than left to rot.

Follow-up view. The Followup Dashboard – Enquiry shows every open EQ with ageing and next action. See the difference between an enquiry and a formal offer in the enquiry-to-order process guide.

Stage 3 — Under Feasibility (status 32)

What it means. Before you price anything, someone in sales or engineering has to answer a plain question: can we actually make this, with our processes, tooling and capacity, to the customer's spec? The feasibility stage is where a technically risky or out-of-scope enquiry is caught early — before estimation effort is spent on a job you cannot win or cannot deliver.

What document / status it is. The same EQ document moves to status 32 – Under Feasibility. No new document is created; the enquiry simply advances its status, and the transition is appended to its history so the timeline shows exactly when review began.

Exit criteria. Feasibility exits in one of two directions. Feasible enquiries advance to estimation (status 33). Enquiries that cannot be made — wrong process, no capacity, unacceptable risk — are closed as Enquiry Regretted (36) with the reason recorded, so the "no" is captured, not lost.

Follow-up view. Feasibility items surface on the enquiry follow-up dashboard, flagged as awaiting technical review. The costing that follows is handled by Feasibility & Estimation.

Stage 4 — Under Estimation (status 33, with review sub-states 37/38)

What it means. This is where the enquiry gets a real, defensible cost. Rather than a finger-in-the-air number, the estimator builds a costed structure for the enquired item — material and process cost derived from an actual bill of materials and routing (BOM/BOR). The price you eventually quote is grounded in that estimation, which is what protects your margin on make-to-order work.

What document / status it is. The EQ document moves to status 33 – Under Estimation. Estimation reuses the same BOM/BOR engine that production later relies on, through the "Create Estimation" action, so the costing is not a throwaway spreadsheet. Two further sub-states carry the techno-commercial review: statuses 37 and 38 hold the estimate through internal approval before it is allowed to become a quotation. Enquiries killed at this stage are kept as Enquiry Regretted (36) so they still count in conversion analytics.

Exit criteria. Estimation exits when a costed, reviewed and approved figure exists — the techno-commercial review (37/38) has signed off the price and terms. The enquiry is then ready to be quoted.

Follow-up view. Estimation items appear on the enquiry dashboard as "under estimation / review", so a costing that stalls in engineering is visible to the salesperson chasing the customer, not buried in an inbox.

Stage 5 — Quotation Sent (status 34, document QT)

What it means. The quotation is your formal, priced offer to the customer — the commitment that says "this is what we will make, for this price, on these terms, valid until this date." Where the enquiry is what they ask, the quotation is what you promise, and it is the document that gets negotiated.

What document / status it is. Raising and sending a quotation creates a QT document at status 34 – Quotation Sent, normally referencing the source enquiry so the chain stays intact. Commercial terms come from reusable parameter/terms templates. Crucially, a quotation can be revised with full version history — every revision is preserved, so you always know which version the customer holds — and it passes an approval / release gate before it goes out. A comparison view lets you line up revisions or competing options side by side.

Exit criteria. A quotation exits when the customer decides. A win converts it into an Order Acceptance (advancing the deal to status 35); a loss regrets the underlying enquiry (36). Until then it stays "sent, awaiting decision."

Follow-up view. The Followup Dashboard – Quotation is where most revenue is actually protected — every sent quote awaiting a decision, with ageing so a quote going cold is chased. This whole stage is powered by Quotation Management.

Stage 6 — Order Received / Order Acceptance (status 35, document OA)

What it means. This is the win. When a quotation is accepted, the deal becomes a confirmed customer order — the Order Acceptance — and the pipeline hands the sale to the factory and to accounts. The OA is the single document production plans against and billing invoices against, so getting it right closes the loop cleanly.

What document / status it is. The won quotation converts into an OA document and the enquiry reaches status 35 – Order Received. The OA has its own internal lifecycle: Check → Release → Complete. A Check verifies the order is correct; Release makes it the official handoff artefact; Complete closes it once fulfilled. Two OA sub-types matter in manufacturing: sample orders (SMOA) and tooling orders (TOA), each with its own follow-up dashboard because sample and tooling work is chased differently from a production order.

Exit criteria. The OA advances through its own Check → Release → Complete gates. The released OA is the point of handoff — Fast Production builds the process sheet and work order from it, and Fast Billing raises dispatch and invoice against it.

Follow-up view. The Followup Dashboard – Order Acceptance (with SMOA and TOA variants) tracks confirmed orders in progress, alongside an order-status roll-up and payment follow-up. This stage is Order Acceptance, feeding Fast ERP & Billing.

Status-code reference table

These are the pre-sales status codes that decode the pipeline. They live in the shared status-decode table and are the stable backbone of every enquiry-to-order deal; the current code is stored on the document and each transition is appended to its history. Each code also maps to the follow-up view where sales chases it.

One screen, parameterised by document type, drives all of these — Lead, Enquiry, Quotation and Order Acceptance are the same follow-up dashboard filtered to a stage, each row carrying ageing and a next action. That is what stops a deal falling between two people: whichever stage it is in, it appears on exactly one list with a date attached. The dashboards and the Customer 360 behind them are covered in Follow-up & Customer 360, and the wider relationship record in what is Customer 360.

Measuring pipeline health

Because every stage is a status on a document, the pipeline measures itself. You are not asking reps to self-report a percentage; you are counting documents by status and age. Two lenses matter most.

Read together, conversion tells you whether the pipeline is efficient (good enquiries becoming orders) and ageing tells you whether it is moving (nothing stuck). For manufacturers running long capital-equipment cycles this pairing is essential — see the capital-equipment CRM approach to chasing multi-touch deals. Sales dashboards and KPIs roll these up, and Dhruv AI can summarise conversion trends in plain English and cluster enquiry remarks into themes, so the "why" behind a falling win rate is not left to guesswork.

Frequently asked questions