Most Indian SMBs never sat down and designed a sales process. It grew. The founder sold a certain way, the first hire copied about half of it, the second hire invented the rest, and the CRM stages came from whatever the software offered on installation day. Everyone is working hard. Deals do close. But nobody can say what a deal in the middle of the pipeline has actually been through, so every review turns into a discussion of feelings rather than facts, and every forecast is a hope with a number attached.
Why it persists. It persists because the process is invisible while things are going well. Nobody misses a document they have never had. The team is busy selling, and stopping to define stages feels like paperwork that takes time away from customers. When someone does attempt it, the first version is usually too heavy, built by one person alone, agreed in a meeting and never used again. That failure becomes the reason not to try again, so the company keeps running on individual habit.
If it stays unresolved. Left alone, your sales capacity stays tied to the few people who already know how to sell here. Growth means adding headcount and hoping each new person works it out. Forecasts stay unreliable, so cash, hiring and stock decisions are made on numbers that move without warning, and the business carries risk it cannot see.