A five-stage sales pipeline you can run in a notebook

The problem is not too few leads, it is not knowing where they are

Ask most owners how sales are going and you get a feeling: busy, slow, fine. Ask them how many estimates are out right now and how many of those they expect to win, and the room goes quiet. The work is in their head, in text threads, on sticky notes and in an inbox, and the only time it becomes visible is when the month ends and the bank balance reports the result.

I am Mantas Auk, I run an SEO agency in Dallas and I am a member of BNI Preston Center, a referral chapter of about 70 business owners. Most of us sell our own work. Nobody in the room would call themselves a salesperson, and yet every one of us has to know, each week, which conversations are moving and which have stalled. The tool for that is a pipeline, and the version I describe here fits on one page of a notebook.

Harvard Business Review published research by Jason Jordan and Robert Kelly under a headline that says it all: Companies with a Formal Sales Process Generate More Revenue. The word that matters there is formal. Not complicated, not automated. Written down, with named stages and a regular review. That is the whole ambition of this guide.

The five stages, and the exact moment a lead moves

A pipeline is a list of every open opportunity sorted by how close it is to money. Five stages are enough for almost any small business, and the discipline is in the definitions: a lead moves to the next column only when a specific thing has happened, not when you feel good about it.

Here are the five, with the event that moves a lead into each one.

• Lead: someone raised a hand. A call, a form, a referral, a card. It enters the moment you log it, with a name, a source and a date.
• Qualified: you have spoken with them and confirmed four things: they have the problem you solve, they can pay for it, the person you are talking to can decide, and the timing is real. If any of those is missing, it stays a lead.
• Estimate: you have delivered a written price and scope, and they have it in their hands. Promising a quote does not count. Sending it does.
• Decision: you have asked for the business and they have told you when they will decide. A lead that has an estimate but no decision date is not here yet; it is still in Estimate, and probably stuck.
• Won or lost: they signed, paid a deposit or scheduled the job, or they told you no, or you decided after a set number of touches that silence means no. Every lead ends here. Nothing stays open forever.

How to set it up in a notebook, a spreadsheet or whatever you have

Take one page and draw five columns. Each open opportunity is one line: name, what they want, the date it entered the current column, and the next action with a date. That is all. When a lead moves, cross it out and rewrite it in the next column. The rewriting is a feature, not a chore; it forces you to look at every name once a week.

A spreadsheet does the same thing with the advantage that you can sort by the date-entered column and see at a glance what has been sitting. If you have a CRM, use it the same way and resist the urge to add fields. The pipeline fails when it becomes a data-entry job rather than a thinking tool.

My fellow member Brandon Turman, who builds custom software, wrote a useful guide on when the spreadsheet that runs your business should become software. His test is a good one for pipelines too: move to software when more than one person needs to see the same list at the same time, not before.

The weekly review: fifteen minutes that change the month

Pick a fixed time. Mine is Friday morning before the inbox opens. Go down every line in every column and answer one question per line: what is the next action, and when? If you cannot name one, the lead is stuck and you decide on the spot whether to push it or close it as lost. Stuck leads are the hidden cost in every small business; they feel like a full pipeline and produce nothing.

Then look at the dates. Anything in Estimate for more than two weeks without a decision date gets a call that day with a direct question: is this still happening, and what would help you decide? Anything in Lead for more than a week without a conversation is a follow-up failure, and fellow member Karl Haddad's guide to missed calls and slow follow-up covers the fix.

Finally, look at the shape. If most of your lines are in Lead and almost none in Estimate, you are not qualifying or not asking for the meeting. If Estimate is full and Decision is empty, you are sending quotes and never asking for the business. The shape tells you what to work on next week better than any sales book.

The three numbers to count, and the two to ignore

Count three things every month. First, how many new leads entered, by source: website, Google, referral from a specific person, repeat customer. Second, your win rate: of the leads that reached Won or lost this month, what share were won? Third, the average time from Lead to Won, in days. Those three numbers, tracked for six months, tell you where business comes from, how good you are at closing it and how long your cash takes to arrive.

The Small Business Administration's guide to marketing and sales makes the same point in plainer terms: compare what you spend on marketing and sales to the revenue it generates, and plan for what happens after the sale. A pipeline with a source column is the cheapest way I know to do that comparison honestly.

Ignore two numbers that owners love. The total value of everything in the pipeline is a fantasy figure, because half of it will not close. And the number of leads in the top column means nothing without the win rate underneath it. Fifty leads at a 10 percent close rate is worse than fifteen leads at 50 percent, and it costs more to serve.

• New leads per month, split by source.
• Win rate: won divided by won plus lost, for leads that closed this month.
• Days from Lead to Won, averaged.
• Optional once the first three are steady: average job value by source.

Grading your leads before they enter

Not every lead is equal, and the pipeline works better when you note that at the door. BNI's founder describes five levels of a referral, from a bare name and phone number at level one up to a personal introduction in which the referrer has already confirmed the prospect's need and interest. He writes that with a level-one referral you still have to do 95 percent of the work to close.

I borrow the idea for every source. A web form from someone comparing three companies is a level one. A past customer calling back is a four. A referral where the partner has already told the prospect what I charge and why is a five. Mark the level next to the name when the lead enters. After a few months you will see that your win rate and your days-to-close track the level almost perfectly, and that tells you where to put your marketing hours.

Where referrals fit in the same columns

Referred leads go into the same pipeline, with two differences. They usually skip straight to Qualified, because the referrer has already confirmed the need, and they carry a second obligation: the person who referred you needs to hear how it went. BNI's guidance on referral follow-up asks members to set aside time each week to review open referrals and to report back to the referring member on whether the introduction turned into business. I do that in the same Friday fifteen minutes, because the list is already in front of me.

In our chapter the reporting is built into the Thursday meeting. Members stand and say "I have a thank-you for closed business" and name the member who sent the client. That is pipeline review done in public, and it is a large part of why the chapter reported $3,982,650 in closed business passed between members in the past twelve months. The number is member-reported and it varies widely by seat, but it exists because people kept track.

Mistakes I see in owners' pipelines

The first mistake is moving leads forward on hope. An estimate that was "well received" is still in Estimate until there is a decision date. The second is never closing anything as lost, so the page fills with ghosts and the win rate looks fine because nothing ever reaches the denominator. Set a rule: four touches without a reply is a loss, logged as such.

The third is skipping the review for a busy week, then two, then finding the page a month out of date and abandoning it. The pipeline survives on the fixed fifteen minutes, not on enthusiasm. The fourth is building something elaborate before the habit exists. A business consultant such as Armando Juarez will tell you he has seen more owners defeated by a complicated CRM than by a simple notebook that was actually used.

Start this Friday, and bring the shape to lunch

This week, list every open conversation you can remember and sort it into the five columns using the definitions above, not your feelings. Most owners discover that half their "pipeline" is in Lead with no conversation yet and that two or three estimates have been sitting for a month. Call those three first. Then put the fifteen-minute review on the calendar for every Friday and protect it.

If the shape of your pipeline shows that leads are the problem rather than closing, the fix is usually more partners who meet your customer before you do. I compared the ways to find them in my guide to business networking in Dallas. The one I use is a chapter of about 70 owners, one per category, that meets every Thursday at 11:30 AM at Park City Club, 5956 Sherry Lane in Preston Center, with open networking from 11:00 AM. Register on the Visit page and bring your five columns. Half the room keeps the same page, and the conversation about what is stuck in Estimate is the most useful one you will have that week.

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