A pipeline full of ‘interested’ clients can look healthy while giving you very little information about what will happen next. A service business needs to understand fit, scope, the decision process and the next commitment before it can plan delivery.
Start with a small set of stages and define what allows an opportunity to move between them. The example here is a working model for an agency or consultancy, not a universal forecast or a claim that every client follows the same path.
The useful idea
A pipeline stage should describe evidence about the opportunity, not how hopeful the team feels. Every open opportunity also needs a next action.
Choose the decisions your pipeline needs to support
Ask what the team needs to know each week. Which enquiries need a reply? Which proposals are waiting for a decision? Which potential projects may require delivery capacity? These questions should shape the stages and fields.
Keep leads and opportunities distinct in your process. A name on an enquiry list is not necessarily an agreed sales conversation. Decide what evidence makes an enquiry worth actively assessing, and record why an opportunity is not a fit when that becomes clear.
Define stages using observable evidence
Name stages for the state of the conversation, then attach an exit condition. The table below is illustrative. Adapt it to your service and use fewer stages if the team cannot explain the difference between two of them.
Allow an opportunity to pause or move backwards when information changes. A proposal can return to scope discussion without the team hiding that uncertainty. Stage history is useful when it records a real change in understanding.
| Stage | Evidence to progress |
|---|---|
| Enquiry received | A named owner and an agreed next contact |
| Fit being assessed | The need, timing and basic service fit are understood |
| Scope being agreed | Deliverables, dependencies and decision process are clear enough to propose |
| Proposal under review | The client has the proposal and a known review point |
| Decision recorded | The outcome and reason are recorded; won work has a delivery handover |
Keep the next action separate from the stage
A stage tells you where the opportunity stands. The next action tells you how it will move. ‘Proposal under review’ needs a follow-up or a confirmed client decision point; it should not become a place where opportunities wait indefinitely.
Use an action, an owner and a date. ‘Send the clarified scope to the client on Wednesday’ is stronger than ‘Follow up soon’. If the client has not agreed a decision date, label your next contact as your planned check-in rather than a promised client commitment.
Collect information that changes a decision
Useful fields usually include the client need, likely scope, decision maker, timing, dependencies and the source conversation. Commercial information should reflect what is known and clearly distinguish an estimate from an agreed amount.
Avoid filling unknown fields with guesses just to complete the record. An explicit unknown can create a good discovery question. A guessed answer can travel into the proposal or forecast as if the client confirmed it.
- Need: what problem is the client asking you to solve?
- Fit: can your service and team address it?
- Decision: who is involved and how will they choose?
- Timing: what drives the requested dates?
- Next action: what will we do, who owns it and when?
Review stalled opportunities without forcing movement
Look for open opportunities with no next action, repeatedly moved follow-up dates or unresolved questions about fit. Discuss what evidence is missing and whether the team should continue the conversation, pause it or close it with a recorded reason.
Do not move an opportunity to the next stage because it has been open for a long time. Stage changes should reveal progress, not manufacture it. Review the quality of the record before treating the pipeline as a reliable planning input.
Define won as a handover into delivery
Once the decision is made, carry the agreed scope, proposal, key contacts and commitments into the client project. Confirm your normal agreement and readiness conditions before production begins. A sales status should not silently authorise work that the team is not prepared to deliver.
Use the onboarding checklist to close the gap between selling and delivering. Record lost or deferred outcomes too, with a useful reason and any appropriate future check-in. This gives the team a history it can learn from without pretending every enquiry became work.
Opportunity review record
Use this to prepare a concise sales review.
OPPORTUNITY REVIEW Client and opportunity: [names] Current stage: [stage] Evidence for this stage: [confirmed facts] Client need and service fit: [summary] Scope reference: [link / not yet agreed] Decision makers and process: [known / unknown] Timing and dependencies: [facts] Next action: [action / owner / date] Missing information: [question / owner] Outcome and reason: [when decided] Delivery handover: [link, if won]
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