Reporting
Deals and pipeline
When a call turns into something worth tracking, it becomes a deal on the account, with a stage and a value.
Deals sit on accounts
A deal belongs to a company, so the calls, the emails and the notes that produced it are all on the same page as the deal itself. You are never reconstructing a history from two places.
Stages
Stages are yours to define per workspace. The default set covers a straightforward outbound motion and most teams adjust it once and leave it. Moving a deal is a drag on the board or a change on the account.
A deal stage is where a conversation has got to commercially. A cadence step is where a lead has got to in being chased. A lead can be five steps into a cadence with no deal at all, and a deal can sit in negotiation with no chasing happening. Keeping the words apart keeps the reports meaningful.