A deal is a specific potential or completed sale that a business tracks in a CRM. It is commonly used as a synonym for opportunity: one named buyer, one thing they might buy, and one running record of where it stands. Each deal carries structured attributes such as amount, stage, owner, expected close date, and probability of closing, so a team can forecast and prioritize instead of guessing.
How a deal is structured
Most CRMs model a deal as a record with a handful of core fields:
- Amount: the expected value of the sale.
- Stage: where it sits in the pipeline (for example, new, quoted, negotiating, won, lost).
- Owner: the salesperson responsible for moving it forward.
- Probability: a percentage estimate that it will close, often tied to the stage.
- Close date: when you expect it to be won or lost.
Deals also collect a history: notes, emails, tasks, and the linked contact or company. That timeline is what makes a deal useful weeks later when someone picks it back up.
Why it matters
Individually, a deal keeps one conversation from falling through the cracks. In aggregate, deals become a pipeline you can measure. Multiplying amount by probability gives a weighted forecast, and grouping by stage shows where things stall. Without deals, a sales team is working from memory and an inbox.
Deals in B2B quoting on Shopify
In B2B quoting, a quote request is often the moment a deal is created. The requested cart becomes the deal amount, the buyer becomes the linked contact, and the quote’s status (sent, opened, accepted, paid) maps naturally onto deal stages. Treating each quote as a deal, rather than a one-off email, lets a merchant see how many quotes are outstanding, which are stuck, and what revenue is realistically in play.