Lead source
Where an enquiry came from, recorded on the lead at the moment it was captured: a call, a walk-in, a website form, a chat thread, a referral, or an import. It is a field on the record, not something reconstructed from memory later.
Why it matters in practice. Without a source you can count enquiries but never compare them, so a channel that quietly stopped producing stays funded because nobody can show what it returned. The source is also the field that makes a duplicate detectable, since the same organisation usually arrives twice from two different directions.
Often confused with Lead, Duplicate lead, Qualification.
Qualification
The decision that an enquiry is worth working: does it need what you sell, is the timing and budget real, and is it yours to pursue. It is the gate between a captured enquiry and a tracked deal.
Why it matters in practice. Qualification is what stops a pipeline from becoming a list of names. Skipped, every enquiry becomes a deal and the pipeline reports a size nobody can act on. Done once and recorded, it is also the first honest filter on whether a source is worth anything.
Often confused with Stage, Lead, Pipeline.
Stage
One position a deal occupies in your sales process — new, contacted, qualified, quoted, won, lost. Stages are yours rather than a vendor's, and a stage can carry the action that has to happen before a deal is allowed to move on.
Why it matters in practice. A stage is only worth having if arriving in it means something happened. A stage that can be reached without anything being done becomes the place deals go to sit, and the stage counts then measure optimism rather than progress.
Often confused with Pipeline, Qualification, Forecast.
Pipeline
The set of deals currently being worked, arranged by stage. It is a view over records rather than a separate list, so what you see is exactly what the current stages, owners, and next actions say.
Why it matters in practice. The pipeline is a working queue, not a scoreboard. It is only as current as the last time somebody updated a stage, which is why "where is this deal" should be answerable from the record rather than by asking the person who owns it.
Often confused with Stage, Forecast, Opportunity.
Owner
The named person accountable for a lead, an opportunity, or an account. Ownership is a field on the record: dated, reassignable, and readable by whoever manages the team.
Why it matters in practice. Unowned records are the ones that die quietly. An owner is what makes a handover possible without arranging a handover meeting, and what lets a manager see that part of the pipeline belongs to somebody who left a month ago.
Often confused with Role, Round-robin, Next action.
Next action
The single dated thing that has to happen next on a record, with a name attached to it: send pricing, call back Thursday, confirm the site visit. It lives on the record rather than in one person's calendar.
Why it matters in practice. A next action is what separates a live record from a hopeful one. Without a date and a name, the record is only as current as the last time somebody remembered it — and nothing surfaces the ones that were simply forgotten.
Often confused with Follow-up, Owner, Project status.
Forecast
A stated expectation of what will close in a period, built from open deals weighted by their stage. The weighting is an assumption the business chooses, and the output is only as honest as the stage data underneath it.
Why it matters in practice. A forecast built on stages nobody updates is a fiction with a number attached. Stage, owner, and next action are the inputs; when they are stale the forecast is stale in a way that looks precise, which is exactly what makes it dangerous to plan against.
Often confused with Pipeline, Stage, Win rate.
Win rate
The share of deals that were actually closed as won, out of the deals that were actually closed. Both halves matter: a rate computed from a pipeline that is never closed is not a win rate, it is a share of the losses somebody remembered to record.
Why it matters in practice. A worked example, not a benchmark: if ten opportunities are created in a month and four are closed as won, four out of ten is not a win rate, because the other six are open rather than lost. The figure only becomes meaningful once closed deals are counted against each other, which is why deals that went quiet have to be closed deliberately.
Often confused with Forecast, Pipeline, Stage.
Follow-up
The contact after the first one, scheduled as work rather than remembered as intent: another call, a message, a second meeting, a check-in on a quote that was never answered. It is a dated, assigned item.
Why it matters in practice. A great many enquiries are lost to an unanswered message rather than to a competitor. A follow-up living in a calendar nobody else can read becomes a gap the moment that person takes leave, while the record still says the deal is live.
Often confused with Next action, Owner, Lead.
Territory
The named area, region, branch, or segment a business is responsible for. It is a way of deciding who should be talking to whom, rather than a field pasted onto an individual deal.
Why it matters in practice. Territories are what stop two people approaching the same client and nobody approaching the next town. They work only when they are few, written down, and reviewed; an unbounded set of territories is just ownership with extra words attached.
Often confused with Owner, Round-robin, Permission scope.
Round-robin
An assignment rule that deals each new lead to the next person in a fixed rotation, so inbound work reaches everyone instead of landing on whoever happens to be free at the time.
Why it matters in practice. It shares inbound work without anyone having to claim it, which is the point. It also creates its own failure mode: a rotation that ignores territory, capacity, or existing relationships will hand a returning client to whoever is next in the sequence.
Often confused with Owner, Territory, Lead.
Duplicate lead
The same organisation arriving again as a separate record: once as a new lead, once as a company, and once as a contact with a slightly different name. Detection flags the candidates; it does not decide what they are.
Why it matters in practice. Duplicates are not merely untidy, they are expensive — two owners, two next actions, and two chances to quote the same client the same work. Detection surfaces candidates for a person to look at, and the merge policy — what happens to the history, the owner, and the open next actions — is a setup decision the business makes deliberately rather than something to discover after the fact.
Often confused with Relationship record, Lead source, Owner.