A sales pipeline that stays current, at the desk and on the road

Designing a B2B CRM for web and mobile: a pipeline board, deals that move in a tap, goals, dashboards and proposals, so sales teams keep the pipeline current wherever they are.

Client: PipeDesk CRM
Role: Lead Product Designer
Team: 1 PM, 6 engineers 1 data analyst
Read: 3 min

PipeDesk on the web and on the phone: the home screen with today’s activities, and a deal in negotiation

−38%
Time to update a deal: 83%
Deals with a next step scheduled, up from 61%: 3.2×
Pipeline updates made on mobile: 84
SUS usability score

The short version

Context: Mid-sized B2B sales teams ran their pipeline across spreadsheets, a legacy CRM and chat threads. Reps updated deals once a week, usually on Friday afternoon, so the forecast was already stale by Monday.
Problem: Sales research consistently finds reps spend most of their week on work that isn’t selling. Every extra field and click was a reason not to log the call, and managers were forecasting from data nobody trusted.
What I did: I designed PipeDesk as one product on two surfaces: the web app for planning and analysis, the mobile app for the moments between meetings, both built on the same components and data model.
Impact: Shadowing 14 reps and 4 sales managers across three companies showed the job to be done: move a deal forward in seconds, always see the next step, and let managers read the pipeline without chasing people.

Wireframes

Before any visual design, the two core flows were laid out in low fidelity on the real layout: the pipeline board on the web, and the path from a deal to its next stage on the phone.

Four decisions carried the board: (1) one switcher for board, list, calendar and timeline over the same deals; (2) the count and total value in every stage header; (3) cards that show stage, priority, close date, value and source at a glance; (4) adding a deal right where it belongs.

Mobile wireframe flow: a deal card tapped on the board opens the deal, where the stage moves with one tap

Pipeline

The board is where the day starts. Deals are dragged between stages, and the same deals open as a list, a calendar of closing dates or a timeline, without losing the filters.

Each card answers the questions a manager asks in a pipeline review, so the weekly review takes minutes instead of an hour.

The pipeline board: deals in Prospecção, Qualificação, Proposta and Negociação with value and total per stage

A deal in detail: next steps, activity and properties such as owner, value, probability and close date

The pipeline board on the phone, one stage at a time

Moving a deal to another stage from a bottom sheet

“I update deals in the car park between meetings now. Before, it all waited until Friday, and by then I had forgotten half of it.”

Account executive, pilot team

Web and mobile

Mobile is not a smaller web app. It keeps what matters between meetings: today’s activities, the deals closing this week, moving a stage, logging a call, and filters that fit a thumb.

Both apps share one component library and the same tokens, so a deal, a contact or a goal looks and behaves the same everywhere.

Four phone screens: home, activities, the agenda and the team goals

Creating a deal on the phone with company, value, stage and priority

Pipeline filters by stage, owner, close date and value

Insights

Analytics, team dashboards and goals turn the pipeline into a forecast managers can trust, and proposals are generated from the deal itself, with products, pricing and terms in one document.

The analytics overview and the team performance dashboard side by side

A commercial proposal generated from the deal, with scope and investment

Pilot results

−38%
Time to update a deal: 83%
Deals with a next step scheduled, up from 61%: 3.2×
Pipeline updates made on mobile: 84
SUS usability score

What I learned

Speed is the feature. In a CRM, every second saved on an update is data that finally gets in, and better data is what managers are really paying for.

Designing web and mobile together, from the same model, kept the two from drifting apart and made the phone part of the system, not an afterthought.

Magnum SCD•3 min