CRM Adoption Program

The Pipeline

Every lead lives, moves, and converts in the CRM.

The Pipeline helps commercial teams make the CRM the single source of commercial truth: capturing and qualifying every lead, converting leads into opportunities with discipline, managing stages that reflect reality, and keeping data clean enough for AI to work on. Participants learn to think like pipeline operators, not reluctant data-entry clerks.

Most teams do not have a CRM problem. They have an adoption and data discipline problem.

The real challenge is not buying more CRM features. It is getting every lead captured, qualified with evidence, advanced honestly, and reviewed on data everyone trusts.

Leads leak

Inquiries live in inboxes, business cards, and spreadsheets — captured late, qualified never, and lost silently.

Pipeline fiction

Stages reflect optimism instead of evidence, so reviews debate opinions and forecasts miss quarter after quarter.

Data no one trusts

Duplicates, stale fields, and empty notes make every report contestable — and every AI output built on it worse.

CRM as a chore

Sellers experience the CRM as admin surveillance, not a selling tool, so updates happen the night before the review.

The Pipeline Map

Pipeline discipline is a system.

The Pipeline reframes CRM adoption as a structured path from first contact to a managed pipeline.

Every inbound and outbound lead lands in the CRM the day it appears — no exceptions.

Consistent criteria decide fit and intent — not gut feel or who shouted loudest.

A qualified lead becomes an opportunity with an owner and a defined next step.

Deals move on evidence, not optimism, against exit criteria defined in advance.

A structured pipeline review turns opinions into a number leadership can trust.

Clean data, honest stages, and a review cadence running on the team's own CRM.

A contact is not a lead. A stage is not the truth. A managed pipeline has evidence, exit criteria, clean data, and a review routine.

Formats

One blended program. Three integrated components.

The Pipeline is delivered as a sequenced blended journey: a self-paced game builds the logic, live Teams role-plays pressure-test pipeline conversations, and the in-person seminar installs the discipline on the team's own CRM. It can run as the full sequence or as one or two selected components, depending on learning needs, timing, and budget.

Included · 60 min kickoff call

Discovery Phase

Before day one, we map your team's current CRM setup, pipeline stages, data quality, and forecasting routine so the program is calibrated to your CRM, your sales motion, and your reporting reality.

Phase 1 3 × 30 min interactive game

E-Learning

A self-paced game where participants discover the logic of the pipeline: capture every lead, qualify with evidence, convert to opportunity, advance stages honestly, and review to forecast.

Skills

  • Capture every lead fast, regardless of source.
  • Qualify with consistent criteria instead of gut feel.
  • Use AI to score leads and verify against evidence.
  • Read a pipeline the way a manager does.

Tools

  • Lead-to-Opportunity Workflow
  • Lead Scoring Grid
  • AI Follow-Up Prompt

Output: First pipeline score and lead-to-opportunity workflow.

Phase 2 3 × 90 min live online missions

Live Online Sales Simulation

Live role-play as seller, manager, sales ops, and observer — defending stage calls, running pipeline reviews, and using AI to score leads, flag stalled deals, and draft follow-ups.

Skills

  • Defend a stage call with evidence, not optimism.
  • Run a pipeline review that changes deals, not slides.
  • Use AI to flag stalled deals and draft follow-ups.

Tools

  • Stage Definition Guide
  • Pipeline Review Checklist
  • Stalled Deal Flag Routine

Output: Pressure-tested pipeline review simulation.

Phase 3 2 × 6 h in-person practice

Field Seminar

Teams apply everything to their real CRM — defining stages and exit criteria, setting data quality rules, and installing a review and forecasting routine that sticks.

Skills

  • Define stages and exit criteria for your own sales motion.
  • Set data quality rules the team will actually keep.
  • Install a review and forecast cadence leadership trusts.

Tools

  • CRM Data Quality Dashboard
  • Forecast Confidence Rubric
  • Pipeline Governance Routine

Output: A managed lead-to-opportunity pipeline on the team's own CRM.

Included · 3 x 30 min follow-up

Coaching

Three follow-up coaching sessions in the weeks after the seminar, reviewing real pipeline reviews, real stage calls, and real data discipline so the routine sticks after the room empties.

Core Skills

The three core skills of pipeline discipline

The Pipeline focuses on three skills that determine whether a CRM produces a forecast leadership trusts or a report no one believes.

Capture & Qualify

Get every lead into the CRM fast, and qualify with consistent criteria instead of gut feel.

Pipeline Management

Advance opportunities on evidence, keep stages honest, and run reviews that change deals.

Data Discipline

Maintain clean, complete records — the fuel for reliable forecasts and useful AI assists.

Simulation Case

Meridian Industrial Supply. You run the pipeline.

Every live format drops your team into Meridian Industrial Supply — a mid-size B2B distributor with three CRMs' worth of history piled into one messy Salesforce org: a bloated lead backlog, a pipeline far larger than revenue can support, and a new VP Sales who must produce a forecast the board believes.

Teams triage the lead backlog, defend stage calls, clean the data that matters, and present a forecast to a leadership panel. The case runs through the Live Online Sales Simulation missions and the Field Seminar.

4,800
Dormant leads to triage
3.1×
Pipeline-to-revenue ratio
41%
Records missing next steps
1 qtr
To a credible forecast
Final Output

The final deliverable: a CRM-managed lead-to-opportunity pipeline.

Participants do not leave with theory only. They leave with a concrete pipeline artifact — a mapped lead-to-opportunity workflow, stage definitions with exit criteria, data quality rules, an AI-assisted follow-up routine, and a review cadence — running on the team's own CRM.

The result is not more fields filled in. The result is a pipeline leadership can forecast on.

Pipeline artifact contents

  • Lead-to-opportunity workflow
  • Stage definitions & exit criteria
  • Data quality rules
  • Lead scoring criteria
  • AI follow-up routine
  • Stalled-deal flags
  • Review cadence
  • Forecast confidence method
Who It's For

Built for teams that need one trusted pipeline

The Pipeline is useful when commercial teams have a CRM but not a shared source of truth — when stages, forecasts, and follow-ups depend on who you ask instead of what the data shows.

Sales representatives SDRs / BDRs Account managers Sales ops / RevOps Sales managers Sales enablement Commercial excellence CRM admins Business unit leaders

Best fit: B2B teams working in Salesforce, HubSpot, or Dynamics who need one trusted pipeline, not parallel spreadsheets.

Your Instructors

Learn from people who have built the pipeline and managed the forecast

The Pipeline is co-led and taught by two instructors who bring academic rigor and 25+ years of field experience in B2B sales and CRM.

Sol Tanguay

Sol Tanguay, MBA, Ph.D.

Professor of Information Systems & eBusiness, McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management

Sol is a co-founder of FieldEdge Academy. Over a 25+ year career spanning academia, entrepreneurship, and consulting, he has built lead-generation pipelines, closed millions in deals, and helped B2B organizations across North America and Europe adopt customer analytics as a competitive advantage. He is also a worldwide trainer for Michelin.

Leads: Pipeline logic, data discipline, and AI-assisted CRM workflows — the systems thinking behind a forecastable pipeline.

Pablo Gray

Pablo Gray, MBA

Faculty Lecturer in Marketing, HEC Montréal

Pablo is a co-founder of FieldEdge Academy. With over 25 years of high-touch enterprise selling across North America and Latin America, he has built and led sales teams at Fortune 500 and high-growth companies, closed millions in complex deals, and specializes in Key Account Management, executive-level negotiation, and cross-border deal strategy.

Leads: Pipeline reviews, stage-call coaching, and the live role-plays — turning CRM discipline into commercial conversations.

Delivered in English, French, and Spanish.

Pilot Cohort

Ready to run a pipeline pilot?

Run The Pipeline with one sales team, region, or CRM instance — and leave with a managed pipeline and a review routine, not another admin mandate.

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