Single or Multiple Sales Pipelines?

[JLMancke]

We currently work out of a single pipeline, but we sell both services and resell licenses, which have different success rates and cycles.   Are there best practices and/or guidance on when it's better to use a single or multiple pipelines? And if we split out into different pipelines, what are the implications for our dashboard reporting that we should be thinking about?  Thanks for your help!

[RCullinane]

Hi, were you able to figure this out? I have the same questions while I'm building out my company's pipeline(s). Thanks!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JLMancke,

In general, having only one pipeline is easier to manage and report one. You want to use multiple pipelines when the sales process is different, for example an additional or different phase in the sales process.

It sounds like that could well be the case at your company, selling services and reselling licenses. If the phases are exactly the same however, you could simply create a custom deal property that marks a deal as either services or license resale. That would cater to all of your eventual reporting needs in the future as well.

With two pipelines, most situations will require you to create two reports – not the end of the world but definitely added workload.

Your guiding question could be: Am I complicating the life of our sales persons if we're using the same deal stages for both services and licenses? Am I losing out on information by not having custom stages for one of them? If not, I'd recommend sticking to one pipeline and working with custom properties.

Hope this helps!