The short answer
A solar sales pipeline needs eleven stages: new enquiry, contacted, qualified, appointment set, appointment sat, proposal sent, verbal agreement, contract signed, permitting, installed and commissioned. The stages after signature matter because solar revenue is not recognised at signature and a third of problems happen in the waiting.
- 01Solar pipelines must continue past the signature, unlike most sales pipelines.
- 02Every stage needs an exit criterion, or the pipeline becomes a wish list.
- 03Separate appointment set from appointment sat. They are different numbers.
- 04Permitting and interconnection deserve their own stages because they are where deals die.
A generic CRM ships with stages like Lead, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed. That works for software. It does not describe a business where the customer signs in March and the system is switched on in June, and where most of the anxiety lives in between.
What are the stages of a solar sales pipeline?
| Stage | Means | Exits when |
|---|---|---|
| New enquiry | Arrived, nobody has spoken to them | First outbound attempt made |
| Contacted | Two-way contact established | Qualification questions answered |
| Qualified | Owns the property, viable roof, viable bill | Appointment booked |
| Appointment set | Booked, in both calendars | The appointment happens |
| Appointment sat | Survey or consultation completed | Proposal issued |
| Proposal sent | Numbers with the customer | A yes, a no, or a stall |
| Verbal agreement | They said yes, nothing signed | Contract signed |
| Contract signed | Paperwork done, deposit taken | Permit submitted |
| Permitting | Waiting on authority or utility | Approved |
| Installed | Panels on the roof | Inspection and interconnection done |
| Commissioned | Producing, customer handed over | Review requested, job closed |
Eleven looks like a lot until you notice that the last four are where every customer complaint about communication comes from. Tracking them is what lets you send updates nobody had to be asked for.
Why must set and sat be separate?
If they are one stage, a booker with a high set rate and a terrible sat rate looks like your best performer. Separating them exposes the difference, and the difference is usually somebody booking appointments where the co-owner was never going to attend.
It also gives you cost per sat appointment by source, which is the only fair way to compare lead channels. See cutting the solar appointment no-show rate and how much do solar leads cost.
How do you handle the stall?
The most common pipeline distortion in solar is a deal parked in Proposal Sent indefinitely. It flatters the forecast and hides the fact that nothing is happening.
- 01Set a maximum age per stage. Proposal Sent for more than thirty days is not a live deal.
- 02Move it out, do not delete it. It goes to nurture, on a monthly touch. See solar lead nurturing.
- 03Record the reason. Price, timing, spouse, competitor, roof. Six months of these tell you what to fix.
- 04Report on stage age, not just stage counts. A pipeline full of ninety-day-old proposals is not a pipeline.
The stages after signature
Most sales pipelines end at the signature. In solar that is roughly halfway, and the second half is where the reviews get decided.
- Permitting is where the timeline becomes unpredictable and the customer starts wondering whether anything is happening.
- Interconnection is outside your control and inside your reputation. Customers do not distinguish.
- Installed but not commissioned is the single most common source of a bad review, because it looks finished and is not producing.
- Commissioned is the trigger for the review request, two to six weeks later. See how to get more reviews for solar installers.
Each of those stages should fire a customer update automatically. A homeowner who hears nothing for five weeks assumes they have been forgotten, and they are usually right.
Keeping it usable
Eleven stages is the maximum a sales team will maintain. Anything more and records stop being updated, which makes every report downstream wrong.
If you are tempted to add a twelfth, ask what decision it changes. A stage that does not change anyone's next action is a label, and labels are what turn a pipeline into a spreadsheet with worse ergonomics. See solar company KPIs to track for what to measure across these stages.
Reading a pipeline properly
Once the stages are right, three views tell you almost everything about the health of the business, and none of them is the total pipeline value that most dashboards lead with.
| View | What it exposes |
|---|---|
| Conversion rate between adjacent stages | Exactly where deals are being lost, rather than that they are |
| Average days in each stage | Where the process is slow. Usually proposal to signature |
| Deals older than the stage maximum | The forecast inflation nobody wants to look at |
Total pipeline value is the number most likely to be quoted and least likely to be true, because it counts every stalled proposal at full value. The three above are harder to look at and considerably more useful.
Where these stages have to live
Choosing a CRM for a solar companyStop reading, start booking
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Common questions
- How many pipeline stages should a solar company have?
- Around eleven, covering enquiry through to commissioning. Fewer loses the post-signature visibility that solar needs; more than that and the team stops updating records, which makes everything downstream unreliable.
- Should lost deals be deleted from the pipeline?
- Never deleted. Moved to a nurture status with the loss reason recorded. Solar deals lost on timing frequently return, and the loss reasons are the most useful sales data you will collect.
- What is the difference between appointment set and appointment sat?
- Set means booked, sat means it actually happened. Keeping them separate exposes bookers who fill diaries with appointments that never hold, and it is required to calculate cost per sat appointment.
