This page describes a designed model, not shipped behaviour. The stage sets are fixed; no surface serves them from your data yet.
The two rails
Before the sale closes
Six stages, in order: New (created, qualification incomplete) · Discovery (qualification active) · Demo (solution shown, technical fit checked) · Proposal (commercial proposal delivered, evaluation underway) · Negotiation (terms in active discussion) · Verbal or closing (verbal commitment, contracting in flight). A deal then ends in one of two states, won or lost. Won is the handover; lost closes the record.After the sale closes
Eight stages, each with a stated condition for leaving it:What is true of both rails
One stage at a time. A record sits in exactly one stage, set by its most recent recorded transition rather than by anyone’s judgement. Everything else reads the stage. No other Beacon figure works out its own version of where a record has reached. Deal probability, deal health, health score and the rest all read the stage published here. The stage sets are the same for every company; the pace is not. How long a stage typically lasts is calibrated per segment — an enterprise onboarding runs months where an SMB one runs weeks — but no company gets a seventh pipeline stage or a ninth customer stage. Both sets are locked, and changing one is an owner-level change with a recorded rationale, not configuration. Your own stage fields stay yours. Where your CRM’s stage disagrees with the stage published here, yours is an input and this one is what every other Beacon figure reads.Related
Where a deal becomes a customer
What happens at the one point the rails meet.
What changes when a stage changes
The figures that move the moment a record advances.
The lifecycles you define
Building a stage rail of your own.