Your pipeline is the collection of active sales opportunities across all stages of your sales process — from first meeting to proposal to contract review to closed-won. Healthy pipelines have 3–4x pipeline coverage (pipeline value vs. quota), deals distributed across stages, and a clear sense of which are progressing. Pipeline reviews are the weekly ritual where deals get unstuck or killed.
For example, if your Q3 revenue target is $500K, you want $1.5–2M of pipeline at the start of the quarter — because not every deal closes, and some will slip.
We build pipeline generation programs for clients — treating pipeline as the output we're accountable for, not just MQLs delivered.
Relevant Cactus Services
We implement Sales Pipeline strategies for B2B tech startups every day. Book a free 30-minute call to get a concrete plan for your situation.
Book a free strategy call →Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Your ICP is the precise description of the company most likely to buy, stay, and expand.
Sales Development Representative (SDR)
An SDR is the outbound hunter on your sales team — their job is to generate qualified meetings, not close deals.
Business Development Representative (BDR)
A BDR is similar to an SDR but often focuses on larger, more strategic accounts or outbound into new markets rather than a defined territory.
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
TAM is the total revenue opportunity if you captured 100% of your target market.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)
SAM is the portion of TAM you can actually reach with your current GTM motion.
Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)
SOM is the slice of SAM you can realistically capture in the next 12–24 months given your resources, competition, and execution capacity.