Tips for Setting Up Lead Lifecycle in Pipedrive as a New RevOps Manager

·May 11, 2026 07:48 PM·

Hey y'all - I've recently joined a company as their first RevOps Manager. My expertise is in Salesforce, but they use Pipedrive. I have a question for any Pipedrive Admins in this group: how do y'all have Leads set up? I'm want to add a Lead lifecycle before it's converted into a Deal, but I'm having some trouble figuring out a workaround. I fear Pipedrive is far too simple for what I'm looking to do but I'm not sure if a full CRM switch is in the cards at the moment. If anyone has any tips or tricks, please reach out to me. 🙏

5 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Kayla C.
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Hi Minesh Tailor I know Pipedrive quite well. You can add leads to the lead inbox and then only convert them to a deal when they're qualified. Have you played around with the leads inbox yet?
Minesh Tailor
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Hi Kayla C.! We do have the lead inbox set up currently. I think the workaround I have to do is add a custom field called "lead stage" to track the lifecycle and then create some automations around that. I do wish leads were more like salesforce and hubspot though. Pipedrive leads feel more like a spreadsheet-esque list. If you have any general tips/tricks for Pipedrive, I'd love to hear them! 🙂
Kayla C.
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Ah got it, you want to track the lifecycle before it gets to the deal. Yup you can either use labels or a custom field (single select)
Kayla C.
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And then your automations can be when a lead is updated to X label or X option in the custom field, do X
Rajesh L.
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Hey Minesh Tailor, salesforce to pipedrive is a proper adjustment, I won't lie 😅 Pipedrive's Leads inbox is basically just a waiting room, there's no real stage progression built in, which is frustrating when you're used to Salesforce's lead object. Two things that actually work in practice: First, build a separate pipeline just for pre-deal stages. Call it whatever makes sense, "Lead Pipeline", "Prospecting", whatever. mql then sql thn qualified, then convert to your main deal pipeline when they're ready. It's a bit of a hack but most Pipedrive teams end up doing some version of this. Second , if you need automation on top of that (lead assignment, notifications, lifecycle triggers) you're probably looking at make or zapier to fill the gaps Pipedrive leaves. The honest truth though, if you're coming from Salesforce and trying to build anything resembling a proper lead lifecycle, you're going to keep hitting pipedrive's ceiling. might be worth having that crm conversation sooner rather than later depending on where the business is heading. Happy to chat through it if useful, I deal with this kind of thing a lot.

Kayla C.
·
·
Hi Minesh Tailor I know Pipedrive quite well. You can add leads to the lead inbox and then only convert them to a deal when they're qualified. Have you played around with the leads inbox yet?
Minesh Tailor
·
·
Hi Kayla C.! We do have the lead inbox set up currently. I think the workaround I have to do is add a custom field called "lead stage" to track the lifecycle and then create some automations around that. I do wish leads were more like salesforce and hubspot though. Pipedrive leads feel more like a spreadsheet-esque list. If you have any general tips/tricks for Pipedrive, I'd love to hear them! 🙂
Kayla C.
·
·
Ah got it, you want to track the lifecycle before it gets to the deal. Yup you can either use labels or a custom field (single select)
Kayla C.
·
·
And then your automations can be when a lead is updated to X label or X option in the custom field, do X
Rajesh L.
·
·
Hey Minesh Tailor, salesforce to pipedrive is a proper adjustment, I won't lie 😅 Pipedrive's Leads inbox is basically just a waiting room, there's no real stage progression built in, which is frustrating when you're used to Salesforce's lead object. Two things that actually work in practice: First, build a separate pipeline just for pre-deal stages. Call it whatever makes sense, "Lead Pipeline", "Prospecting", whatever. mql then sql thn qualified, then convert to your main deal pipeline when they're ready. It's a bit of a hack but most Pipedrive teams end up doing some version of this. Second , if you need automation on top of that (lead assignment, notifications, lifecycle triggers) you're probably looking at make or zapier to fill the gaps Pipedrive leaves. The honest truth though, if you're coming from Salesforce and trying to build anything resembling a proper lead lifecycle, you're going to keep hitting pipedrive's ceiling. might be worth having that crm conversation sooner rather than later depending on where the business is heading. Happy to chat through it if useful, I deal with this kind of thing a lot.