Step by step guide to automating sales pipeline tracking in Charma for GTM teams

If you're running a go-to-market (GTM) team, you know the pain of tracking a sales pipeline—especially as headcount grows and everyone’s “system” is a mess of spreadsheets and updates that never arrive on time. This guide is for GTM leaders, ops folks, or anyone who wants to get out of pipeline chaos and into something that actually works. We'll walk, step by step, through setting up automated pipeline tracking using Charma, a tool that’s actually built for this kind of thing (and isn’t just another CRM bolt-on).

Why automate pipeline tracking? (And why not just use a CRM?)

Let’s be honest: most teams don’t trust their CRM reports. Pipeline updates are late, notes are inconsistent, and “next steps” live in email threads or people’s heads. You want a source of truth that:

  • Updates itself (or at least nags people so you don’t have to)
  • Makes it dead simple to see what’s moving, stuck, or slipping
  • Doesn’t require an ops person to babysit

Charma helps with this because it’s designed around meetings and follow-up—so pipeline reviews happen where the team is already talking, not in some dusty dashboard. If you’re hoping for magic, you’ll be disappointed: no tool will fix garbage data or a team that doesn’t care. But with some setup and buy-in, you’ll get a lot closer.

Step 1: Map your actual pipeline (not your ideal one)

Before you touch Charma, spend 30 minutes getting real about your pipeline stages. Not what’s in Salesforce, but what your team actually does. Write it down, ugly and honest. For example:

  • New Lead
  • Discovery Call Scheduled
  • Proposal Sent
  • Verbal Commit
  • Contract Signed

Pro Tip: Fewer stages are better. If you need a flowchart to explain your pipeline, you’ve already lost. Aim for 5–7 stages, tops.

Step 2: Set up your Charma workspace

Assuming you’ve signed up for Charma, get your workspace sorted:

  1. Create a Team: Invite everyone involved in sales—AEs, SDRs, managers, even the ops folks who keep things moving.
  2. Set Permissions: Make sure account execs can edit, managers can review, and nobody else can accidentally delete stuff.
  3. Create a “Sales Pipeline” recurring meeting: This is where pipeline tracking will actually happen.

What to ignore: Don’t waste time on templates or automations yet. Get the basics working before you optimize.

Step 3: Build your pipeline tracking template in Charma

Charma’s meeting templates let you add structured sections for every recurring meeting. Here’s how to make a pipeline tracker that won’t get ignored:

  1. Create a new meeting template for “Pipeline Review.”

  2. Add a section for each pipeline stage. You want something like:

  3. New Leads

  4. In Discovery
  5. Proposal/Negotiation
  6. Commit

  7. Closed Won/Lost

  8. For each section, use a table or checklist with columns for:

    • Account/Opportunity name
    • Owner
    • Last update
    • Next step
    • Deal size (optional, but helpful)

  9. Assign owners so there’s nowhere to hide. Each deal gets a name next to it.

What works: Tables beat freeform notes every time. If you use checklists, you can assign follow-ups directly.

Don’t bother: Fancy tags, color coding, or automation rules for every possible scenario. Start simple so people actually use it.

Step 4: Automate reminders and updates

Here’s where Charma starts to pay off. The most common reason pipeline tracking fails? No one updates it. Here’s how to fix that:

  1. Set pre-meeting reminders: Charma can ping owners a day before the pipeline review, reminding them to update their deals.
  2. Assign “update tasks” for each deal: If a deal is stuck, assign a quick follow-up right in Charma.
  3. Automate recurring agenda items: Charma lets you keep “stale” deals at the top of the agenda until someone updates or closes them.
  4. Notifications: Make these reasonable—don’t let Charma spam the team, or people will start ignoring it.

Pro Tip: Automate only what people actually need. Over-automation leads to notification fatigue.

Step 5: Link Charma to your CRM (if you must)

You’ll probably still have to report numbers from Salesforce, HubSpot, etc. Charma’s integrations are decent, but they’re not magic. Here’s the honest rundown:

  • Charma → CRM: If your CRM is the source of truth, you can use Charma’s integrations to pull in deals for updates.
  • CRM → Charma: If you want updates in Charma to push back to your CRM, check if your plan allows it and test with a dummy record. Don’t trust sync until you see it work.
  • Manual over automation: For most teams, a simple copy-paste once a week is faster and less risky than a bot that “sometimes” works.

What to ignore: Don’t waste hours on a Zapier setup unless you have serious volume. For <50 deals, manual with a checklist is just fine.

Step 6: Run your first automated pipeline review

Here’s where it all comes together:

  1. Open the pipeline meeting in Charma.
  2. Walk through each stage using your template. Owners give quick, focused updates (“what’s changed since last time, what’s next step”).
  3. Assign follow-ups and next steps right in the meeting. Charma will remind folks before the next review.
  4. Mark deals as moved, won, or lost—update live, in real time.
  5. Export or summarize as needed for execs who still want a status email.

What works: Keeping meetings snappy and focused on what’s changed, not on reading deal histories.

Don’t bother: Going into the weeds on every stuck deal. Assign an action and move on.

Step 7: Iterate and improve (but don’t overcomplicate)

After a few cycles, you’ll start to see what works and what’s just noise. Watch for:

  • Sections no one uses: Cut them.
  • Updates that never get filled in: Figure out why (usually it’s too much work or not clear what’s needed).
  • People ignoring reminders: Adjust frequency, or move to a live-update model during the meeting.

Pro Tip: Don’t be afraid to delete stages, combine steps, or change the template. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s a system your team actually uses.

What works, what doesn’t, and what to ignore

  • Works: Assigning owners, recurring reminders, and live updates in meetings.
  • Doesn’t work: Hoping people will update “when they get a chance.” They won’t.
  • Ignore: Fancy reporting dashboards until your basic pipeline hygiene is consistent.

Keep it simple, review often

Automating pipeline tracking in Charma isn’t about chasing the latest tool or process. It’s about finding the least-annoying way for your team to keep deals moving and avoid surprises. Start simple, fix what’s broken, and don’t be afraid to trim the fat. If you stick with it for a month, you’ll wonder why you ever put up with spreadsheet chaos in the first place.