The 4 statuses of an opportunity explained: open, won, lost, abandoned
Open, won, lost, abandoned: the 4 statuses of an opportunity, when to use each and how they impact your forecasts.
Written By Baptiste Lorreyte
Last updated 24 days ago
Every opportunity in CrocoClick has a status, which is distinct from its stage in the pipeline. Understanding these four statuses is essential for effectively managing your sales activities.
Stage vs. Status: Don’t Confuse Them
The stage indicates where the deal is in your process (Qualification, Proposal, Negotiation, etc.). The status indicates the final state of the opportunity: active or closed, and if closed, how.
An opportunity can change stages dozens of times. But it has only one status at any given moment.
The 4 statuses in detail
Open
The opportunity is active and currently being processed. This is the default status upon creation. As long as the deal is neither closed nor abandoned, it remains open.
All open opportunities are included in your revenue forecasts. They represent your future sales potential.
Won
The deal is signed, invoiced, or closed. You have the order. This is the status we aim for.
Use this status only when the deal is definitively won, not when it is "almost certain." A "Won" status used too early skews your numbers and creates false good news.
Lost
The deal won’t go through: the prospect chose a competitor, their budget was rejected, the project was canceled, or they clearly said no.
When you mark an opportunity as lost, take three seconds to add the reason for the loss. This information, accumulated over several months, will tell you what is holding your sales back the most.
Abandoned
The opportunity is neither won nor lost: it has simply fallen by the wayside. The prospect is no longer responding, you’ve stopped following up, and the matter has died without ever being resolved.
This is an important status for the accuracy of your numbers. If you leave all these "dormant" opportunities with an Open status, your pipeline will artificially inflate and your forecasts will become wildly inaccurate.
Comparison table
Why using statuses correctly makes all the difference
For your forecasts: only open opportunities feed into forecasting. The cleaner your statuses are, the more reliable your forecasts will be.
For your automations: you can trigger different actions based on the status. Opportunity won? Send the contract, create the onboarding task. Opportunity lost? Long-term nurturing sequence. Opportunity abandoned? Follow-up in 3 months.
For your analysis: the conversion rate report compares Open / Won / Lost / Abandoned. A pipeline with 40% abandoned opportunities indicates a problem with the follow-up process, not a product quality issue.
Common mistakes to avoid
Don’t just mark everything as “Lost” for convenience: Abandoned opportunities deserve their own status. Otherwise, you’re depriving yourself of a valuable indicator of your follow-up process.
Don’t let your opportunities linger in the Open status for months: A monthly “cleanup” of dead opportunities is essential to maintain a usable pipeline.
Avoid manually changing the status while an automation is running on that opportunity; you risk interrupting the workflow.
How to change an opportunity’s status
The status can be changed in three ways:
Manually from the opportunity card, by clicking on the status displayed at the top
Automatically via an automation (the "Change opportunity status" action)
In bulk from the list view, by selecting multiple opportunities and changing the status all at once
To learn more
To understand the concept of an opportunity as a whole, see What is an opportunity in CrocoClick.
To use the status in your automations, see Automating actions associated with a pipeline in CrocoClick.