Define stages by what the buyer does
The classic error is defining stages by seller activity: demo given, proposal sent. Buyers do not care what you sent. Define each stage by a buyer commitment: they agreed the problem costs money, they brought the economic buyer into a meeting, they confirmed budget and timeline, they took the proposal to their board. Five or six such stages cover almost any B2B motion.
Stage names then become falsifiable. A deal is in evaluation because the buyer did something observable, not because the seller feels momentum. That single change makes every pipeline review shorter and more honest.
Exit criteria end wishful thinking
For each stage, write the two or three facts that must be established before a deal advances: the pain is quantified, the decision process is mapped, the signature path is named. Deals that cannot meet the criteria do not advance; they either get the missing fact or they age visibly where they are, which is the point. Most pipeline rot hides in deals promoted on optimism.
Exit criteria also make coaching concrete: a stalled deal is missing a specific fact, and the next call exists to get it. That is a very different conversation from try to push it along.
Keep it one page, and review it monthly
The whole process, stages, buyer commitments, exit criteria, owner per stage, fits on one page, and the one page is the tool: pinned where deals are worked, applied in every review. Then revisit it monthly against reality: where do deals actually stall, which criteria predict closing, which stage is a fiction everyone skips? A process that never changes is not being used.
As the team grows past the founder, the process is the training: a new seller who can run the one page runs the motion, which is how founder-led sales eventually becomes a team sport without the win rate collapsing.
The Sales Desk runs the process you write
VelorStrategy’s Sales Desk holds leads, deals, customers and reports in one governed pipeline: your stages and exit criteria live on the deal record, so promotion requires the facts and the review reads itself. Velora drafts follow-ups and summarizes deal history right on the record.
It is the process page made operational, on the workspace built for founder-led teams: one login from the $19 Plus membership, US and global.
Frequently asked questions
How many stages should a B2B sales process have?
Five or six, each defined by a buyer commitment with written exit criteria. More stages add bookkeeping, not insight; fewer hide where deals actually stall.
What are exit criteria in sales?
The facts that must be true before a deal advances a stage: quantified pain, mapped decision process, named signature path. They convert pipeline reviews from mood checks into fact checks.
When does a startup need a sales process?
The day someone other than the founder talks to a buyer, and honestly before: a written process makes the founder’s own selling reviewable instead of anecdotal.