---
title: "How many stages should a DM lead pipeline have?"
description: "Five is usually enough: Inquiry, Interested, Negotiating, Closed won and Closed lost. More stages just means more fields nobody updates, and the ones that matter (what it's worth, who owns it, which post it came from) get skipped."
author: "Kaitlyn Bricker"
author_url: "https://www.inexra.com/about"
date: "2026-10-28"
updated: "2026-10-28"
canonical: "https://www.inexra.com/answers/how-many-stages-should-a-dm-pipeline-have"
---

# How many stages should a DM lead pipeline have?

Five is usually enough: Inquiry, Interested, Negotiating, Closed won and Closed lost. More stages just means more fields nobody updates, and the ones that matter (what it's worth, who owns it, which post it came from) get skipped.

Agencies that build their own pipeline from scratch tend to overbuild it: eight or ten stages that map every nuance of a sales conversation. It looks thorough in a template and falls apart in week two, because nobody updates a card through six transitions for a $40 consult booking.

Five stages cover almost every DM lead or brand deal an agency handles:

- **Inquiry.** Someone asked. Nothing's agreed yet.
- **Interested.** You've replied and they've engaged with specifics.
- **Negotiating.** Price, date or scope is being worked out.
- **Closed won.** They booked, paid or signed.
- **Closed lost.** They went quiet, said no, or picked someone else.

That last stage is the one teams skip, and it's the one worth keeping. Deleting a dead lead instead of marking it lost erases the pattern. Five "closed lost" cards in a month after a price quote is a signal about your pricing or your pitch, not noise to clear out.

What matters more than stage count is what's attached to each card: who the person is, what they want, an estimated value, an owner, and which post started the conversation. A pipeline with five stages and those five fields filled in beats a twelve-stage board where half the cards are blank.

The full method is in [How to Track Leads and Brand Deals That Start in Instagram DMs](https://www.inexra.com/resources/how-agencies-track-brand-collaborations).