Understanding Sugar Sales Stages

Overview

The progress of opportunities or revenue line items in Sugar is captured in the Sales Stage field. If your instance is configured to use revenue line items, the field is displayed in that module. Opportunity-only instances will display this field on opportunities records. This article covers the default values for the Sales Stage field and their suggested meanings. To edit or add to the default list of sales stages, please refer to the Adding Custom Sales Stages and Probabilities to Opportunities article.

When you select a sales stage in the revenue line item record, the system automatically populates the corresponding probability value (e.g., 10, 20, etc.) in the Probability (%) field. These probability values are a useful tool as it helps calculate and predict your sales forecast for a specified time period. For more information on forecasting, please refer to the Forecasts documentation.

Note: For Sugar versions 12.0.x and higher, you can classify the stock/custom sales stages as "Open", "Closed Won", or "Closed Lost" by editing sales_stage_dom via the Dropdown Editor and selecting the appropriate classification.

Suggested Definitions

The probability value and definition of the default sales stages are as follows:

Sales Stage	Probability	Suggested Definition
Prospecting	10	This is the first stage in the sales process and indicates that the opportunity or revenue line item with this prospect is new and needs to be qualified by a sales representative.
Qualification	20	The sales representative is currently interacting with the prospect to determine if a sales opportunity exists.
Needs Analysis	25	After determining that the prospect has an interest in the products or services, the sales representative now uncovers the prospect's business challenges.
Value Proposition	30	After uncovering the prospect's business challenges, the sales representative now maps the company's products and/or services to the prospect's business challenges and describes the value of the solution.
Id. Decision Makers	40	After determining that there is a match between the prospect's business challenges and the company's products and/or services, the sales representative now identifies the decision makers necessary to close this opportunity or revenue line item.
Perception Analysis	50	The sales representative analyzes the prospect's perceived value of the company's solution at this stage in order to prepare the appropriate combination of products and services for the sales quote.
Proposal/Price Quote	65	The sales representative delivers the proposal, sometimes called the price quote, to the prospect.
Negotiation/Review	80	The sales representative reviews and negotiates the proposal with the prospect.
Closed Won	100	The sales representative has won this opportunity or revenue line item and the company can now bill the customer.
Closed Lost	0	The sales representative has lost this opportunity or revenue line item.