Best practices: design pipeline stages for LinkedIn sales

A pipeline only helps if a glance at the board tells you what to do next. On LinkedIn, deals move through a few observable moments: an invitation, an accepted connection, a first reply, a call. This article gives a stage design that follows those moments and uses what Swimlane's pipelines actually do.

1. Name stages after facts you can check

A good stage describes a state you can verify in the conversation, not an intention. "Interested" is a judgement; "Replied" is a fact. Facts make the board consistent from one week to the next and between teammates, and they give the Suggested pipeline of the Swimlane Analysis something clear to match: it picks the stage whose meaning fits the conversation, and prefers the earliest one.

2. Start from this layout

A pipeline for founder-led or small-team LinkedIn selling:

• To invite: good fits you aren't connected with yet.
• Invited: connection request sent, waiting.
• Connected: accepted, no conversation yet.
• In conversation: they replied at least once.
• Call booked: a meeting is on the calendar.
• Proposal sent: you are waiting for a decision.
• Won: column type Done.
• Not now: column type Abandoned.

A new pipeline starts with Cold, Connected, Engaged and Closed. Rename and add columns rather than starting from scratch (see Set up a pipeline and its stages). Keep it to around seven or eight columns: beyond that, cards stop moving and the board becomes an archive.

3. Close deals with Done and Abandoned, not by deleting

Mark your won column Done and your lost column Abandoned. Contacts there stop being suggested in People to interact with on the dashboard, so your daily suggestions stay about live opportunities. Don't delete lost contacts from the pipeline: "Not now" today is often a good conversation six months later.

Remember what these column types don't do: they don't archive anyone or stop a campaign. If a person asked you to stop, archive them.

4. Give each column-level action its own column

The … menu of a column can send a connection request or a message to everyone in it. Design columns so that one click is always safe:

• Run Send connection request on To invite only. Then move the invited contacts to Invited: the batch is capped at your remaining daily invitations, and contacts already invited still use a place in it before being skipped.
• Run Send message on Connected with a short, personal opener using variables such as {firstName} and {company}. The bulk message doesn't check who already received it, so move everyone who got it to the next column before running it again.

Never run a bulk message on In conversation or later: those people deserve a reply written for them.

5. Keep every active card on a reminder

Nothing moves a card automatically: a reply, an accepted invitation or a campaign never changes a stage. Build a short daily routine instead:

1. Open Inbox → Messaging and handle new replies. Move each person you talk to into In conversation or beyond.
2. Open My Network → Reminders → To do and act on today's follow-ups.
3. Before leaving a card in In conversation, Call booked or Proposal sent, set its next reminder (see Set reminders to follow up).

A card in an active column without a reminder is a deal nobody will chase.

6. Connect campaigns to the board with a tag

Campaigns have no "move to stage" step, but they can tag. In your sequence, follow a Replied to message condition with an Add tag step, for example "Replied". Each morning, open that tag in the Inbox sidebar, select everyone, use Bulk Actions → Assign to pipeline stage to put them in In conversation, then remove the tag with Remove tags so tomorrow's batch only holds new replies.

7. One pipeline per sales motion

A contact sits in only one of your pipelines at a time, and adding them to another removes them from the first. So don't create a pipeline per campaign or per import source: use lists and tags for that, and keep pipelines for distinct ways of selling, such as "New business" and "Partners". Each campaign already has its own read-only board under Campaigns in the Pipelines sidebar.

8. Agree on the same names across the team

Pipelines are personal, so each salesperson builds their own. Use identical stage names anyway: the team digest email reports contacts per pipeline stage, and shared names make it readable at a glance.