How to Create a Sales Pipeline in GoHighLevel

What a GHL pipeline is and why it matters

A pipeline in GoHighLevel is a visual board that shows every active deal or lead and where it sits in your sales process. Each column is a stage. Each card is a contact. Moving a card from one column to the next triggers any automations you have attached to that stage change.

The pipeline is the central hub of your entire GHL setup. When you mark an estimate as sent, the follow-up sequence starts. When you move a job to Completed, the review request fires. When a new lead enters the New Lead stage, the welcome SMS goes out. Every automation in your account connects to a pipeline stage change or a trigger that feeds into the pipeline.

Getting your stages right before you build your automations saves significant rework. A pipeline designed to match your actual sales process means automations trigger at the right moment. A pipeline built too quickly often needs to be rebuilt within the first month when you realise the stages do not map to how you actually work.

Step 1: Plan your stages before building

Write your pipeline stages on paper before opening GHL. Think through every distinct state a lead or deal can be in between first contact and final completion. A stage change should represent a meaningful shift in the relationship, not just a time passing.

For a service business, a clean starting structure is: New Lead, Contacted, Estimate Sent, Follow Up, Won, Scheduled, Completed, Lost. Eight stages is a manageable number to start with. You can always add stages later but removing stages that have contacts in them requires manual cleanup.

Also decide at this stage what each stage change should trigger. New Lead: send welcome SMS. Estimate Sent: start follow-up sequence. Completed: send review request. Won: send booking confirmation. Map these on paper so you can build the pipeline and the automations in sequence.

Step 2: Create the pipeline

In GoHighLevel, click Opportunities in the left sidebar. At the top of the page, click the pipeline dropdown and select Add Pipeline. Give your pipeline a clear name that identifies the business process it covers: "Service Business Pipeline," "Estimate Pipeline" or similar.

Add your stages by clicking Add Stage. Type the stage name and press enter. Add each stage in the order contacts move through your process, from left (earliest) to right (furthest along). You can drag stages to reorder them at any time.

Save the pipeline. It will immediately appear in the pipeline view as a blank board with columns for each stage you created.

Step 3: Configure opportunity settings

Click the settings icon on any stage to configure how opportunities in that stage behave. The most useful settings are the pipeline value field (the estimated dollar value of the deal, which feeds into your revenue reporting) and the close probability (what percentage of opportunities in this stage typically convert to won).

Setting close probabilities on each stage gives you a weighted pipeline value in your reports. A deal in the Follow Up stage might have a 45 percent close probability. A deal in the Won stage is 100 percent. GHL multiplies the deal value by the probability to show your weighted pipeline value, which is more useful for revenue forecasting than the raw total.

Set a default pipeline stage for new contacts coming in from your lead capture forms. Go to Settings, then Pipelines, and choose which stage new form submissions should land in. Most businesses use New Lead as the default entry point.

Step 4: Connect automations to stage changes

Now build the workflows that connect to your pipeline. Go to Automation, then Workflows. For each stage change that should trigger an action, create a new workflow with Pipeline Stage Changed as the trigger. Filter to your specific pipeline and the specific stage.

The most important automations to connect: Estimate Sent triggers the estimate follow-up sequence. Completed triggers the review request sequence. Won triggers a booking confirmation SMS and any onboarding communications. New Lead triggers the welcome SMS if you have not already set it up on the contact creation trigger.

Build each automation, test it with a test contact and publish it before moving to the next. Testing each workflow individually is much easier than debugging a fully built system where multiple automations are all firing at once.

Step 5: Add opportunities and move contacts

To add an existing contact to your pipeline, open their contact record and click Add Opportunity. Select your pipeline, the current stage and any deal value you know. The contact card will appear in your pipeline board immediately.

To move a contact between stages, drag their card from one column to the next in the pipeline board view. The stage change triggers any automations connected to that stage. You can also bulk-move contacts using the list view and the stage dropdown.

For new leads coming in through forms or Facebook ads, set up your workflow to automatically create an opportunity in the correct pipeline stage so the card appears without any manual action.

Step 6: Use pipeline reporting

GHL's pipeline reporting shows you the total value and count of opportunities in each stage, your win rate by stage and your average deal velocity (how long opportunities typically spend in each stage). These four metrics tell you where your pipeline is healthy and where it is leaking.

High drop-off between Estimate Sent and Follow Up usually means the follow-up sequence is not running or not converting. High drop-off between Follow Up and Won often means the follow-up messages need rewriting or the timing is off. A long average time in the Follow Up stage suggests the sequence is not creating urgency.

Review your pipeline report monthly. The patterns that emerge over 60 to 90 days of real data are more actionable than any benchmark because they reflect the specific dynamics of your business and your market.

Pipeline examples by business type

Service business (contractor, HVAC, plumber): New Lead, Contacted, Estimate Sent, Follow Up, Won, Scheduled, Completed, Lost.

Coaching or consulting: New Subscriber, Discovery Call Booked, Discovery Call Completed, Proposal Sent, Client Enrolled, Programme Completed, Testimonial Requested.

Real estate: New Inquiry, Initial Contact, Pre-Approval Status Known, Active Search, Under Contract, Closed, Review Requested.

Marketing agency (new business): New Prospect, Initial Meeting Done, Proposal Sent, Negotiating, Client Won, Onboarding, Active Retainer, Churned.

See our full workflows tutorial for how to connect automations to each of these pipeline stages.