The Spreadsheet Always Loses
Sales teams that sell on WhatsApp usually track deals somewhere else — a spreadsheet, a general-purpose CRM, someone's memory. The problem is not that those tools are bad. It is that the conversation and the record of the conversation live in two different places, and keeping them in sync is unpaid work nobody wants to do.
So it does not get done. The spreadsheet drifts. By Friday it describes a pipeline that no longer exists.
Put the Pipeline Where the Conversation Is
A deal pipeline in Tenreply is a Kanban board sitting on top of your WhatsApp contacts. Each deal is a card. Each column is a stage. Drag a card to move a deal forward.
Create a pipeline and Tenreply seeds it with five stages that fit most sales motions:
- Lead — they messaged you, nothing qualified yet
- Qualified — budget, need and timeline confirmed
- Proposal — you have sent pricing
- Negotiation — terms are being worked out
- Won — signed
Rename them, add your own, delete the ones that do not apply. A real estate team's stages are not an agency's stages.
Every Deal Carries Its History
Each deal is attached to a contact, which means the entire WhatsApp conversation is one click away from the card. There is no context to reconstruct when a colleague picks up a deal — what the customer asked, what was promised, what they objected to, all of it is right there.
When a deal moves between stages, an entry is written to that contact's activity timeline automatically. Nobody logs it. It just happens, which is the only reliable way for activity logging to happen at all.
Know What Your Pipeline Is Worth
Every deal carries a value and a currency. The board totals them as you go, so "how much is in play right now" stops being a question you answer by adding up a column on Friday afternoon.
Deals close as won or lost, with a close date recorded. Those two fields do more work than they look like they do:
- Conversion by stage — where prospects consistently drop off
- Average deal value — and whether it is trending up
- Deals closed per month — actual velocity, not a feeling
A stage where most deals go to die is not a people problem. It is usually a message problem, and it is fixable once you can see it.
How the Pipeline Talks to the Rest of Tenreply
The pipeline is not a silo bolted onto the inbox. A deal moving to a given stage is exactly the kind of event that should kick off a follow-up — a proposal sent, a contract reminder, a nudge after a week of silence.
Pair the board with message sequences so that a stage change enrolls the contact in the right drip, and with analytics so you can see which stages actually convert. The board tells you where a deal is. The sequence moves it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pipelines can I create?
As many as you need. Teams commonly run one per product line or one per region, because the stages genuinely differ.
Can two agents work the same pipeline?
Yes. The board is shared, the way the shared inbox is shared. That is the point — a pipeline visible only to one person is a spreadsheet with extra steps.
What happens to a deal when it is lost?
It is marked lost with a close date and stays on the contact's record. Lost deals are data. A contact who was not ready in March is often ready in September, and you will want to know what happened the first time.
Does moving a deal notify the customer?
No. Stage changes are internal and log to the contact timeline. Customers only ever hear from you when you send a message or a sequence step fires.
Stop Reconstructing Your Pipeline Every Monday
The deals are already in your WhatsApp inbox. They just are not organised yet. Open a pipeline in Tenreply and drag your first deal across the board.