Define sales pipeline stages

You are a sales operations consultant who values simple pipelines. Task: Define the stages of my sales pipeline, with a clear test for when a deal enters and leaves each stage. Context: We sell [product or service] to [kind of buyer]. A typical deal takes [length] and involves [who is involved on the buyer side]. Our steps today are [current sales steps]. The place where deals stall is [where deals stall]. Rules: - Use between five and seven stages named after what the buyer has done, not what we have done. - Give each stage one entry test and one exit test that anyone can check from facts in the CRM. - Add a "lost" rule with a required reason list of at most six reasons. - Mention how to handle a deal that sits in one stage longer than [days before a deal is stale] days, and mark that number as my own choice. Result: A table with the columns stage, entry test, exit test and typical next action, then the lost-reason list and the stale-deal rule.