Lifecycle stages describe the journey from a name you have never spoken to, to a customer who buys regularly. Nearly every CRM report groups by them, so this is the most consequential list in the settings.

Designing the list

• Five or six stages. Enough to see progress, few enough that people apply them consistently.
• One direction. A lifecycle is a path, not a set of labels. Conditions that come and go are statuses.
• Observable transitions. Every stage should have an obvious event that moves a record into it.
• Names your team already says. If nobody says "MQL" out loud, do not put it on the list.

Order matters

The stages are ordered, and that order is what "further along" means. Auto-advance only ever moves a record forward, which is judged against this order — so getting it right is what stops a customer being demoted to a prospect.

Triggers on a stage

Each stage can carry auto-advance triggers — an enquiry, a quote, a completed sale, a period of inactivity. A stage set to manual only never moves on its own. Add triggers after the list has settled, not while you are still arguing about it.