Checklist
A sales pipeline for a small business, checked on Monday
It's Monday, the van's loaded, and last week's quotes are a feeling. You can picture two of them. The third one paid someone else.
A sales pipeline for a small business is the short row of stages that stops that. You'll spend five minutes on it, then ring three people before the first job.
The better Monday is a note on your phone with three names already starred. You ring them from the van. The rest of the list waits until next week.
What the check is for
Small service firms do not lose work only because the phone was busy. They lose it because an enquiry was answered once, a quote went out, and then nobody looked at it again. Monday is a sensible moment because the weekend has piled up a few new messages, and the previous week's quotes are old enough to judge.
You are not forecasting the year. You are answering four questions:
- Who is new, and have they had a useful reply?
- Who is waiting on me?
- Who am I waiting on?
- Which three conversations should happen this morning?
Everything else can wait until after lunch. The guide to the customer's first 24 hours covers the brand-new enquiry. The Monday check is for the ones already a few days old, plus anything that landed while you were off.
A column called "In progress" has been stuck there since the clocks changed. That's the one this check is for.
Ten minutes: write the four questions above on a card and answer them from memory. The gaps are the list you don't have yet.
A sales pipeline for a small business needs real stage names
A pipeline is only useful if the stage tells you the next action. Pipedrive's help on designing a pipeline says each stage is a step a deal goes through before it is won or lost, and that the pipeline should reflect how you actually sell. Pipedrive's own tips say to keep stage names clear and action-based. "Meeting scheduled" or "Proposal sent" tells you something.
"In progress" does not. The same page says too many stages make the pipeline harder to scan, so fewer stages are easier to live with. When you add a pipeline, Pipedrive shows a sample five-stage pipeline you can rename.
That advice travels well beyond one product. For a cleaner, a tradesperson, an adviser or a small agency, a workable set of enquiry stages is:
- New. The enquiry is in, and nobody has replied properly yet.
- Replied. You have asked the missing question or acknowledged them, and you are waiting for a detail.
- Quoted. They have a price, a proposal or a recommended next step, in writing.
- Booked. The job, the review or the start date is agreed.
- Not this time. You lost it, they went quiet after a fair follow-up, or you declined.
You might use "survey booked" instead of "quoted" if that is the real step in your trade. You might split "quoted" and "quote accepted" if money changes hands between those two. Stop when you can no longer tell the stages apart on a Monday morning.
HubSpot describes pipelines in a similar spirit. Its page on setting up pipelines says pipelines help you visualise a process through stages, and that a stage signals where a record is in that process. The default lead pipeline has five stages: New, Attempting, Connected, Qualified and Disqualified. The default sales pipeline has seven deal stages, each with a probability: Appointment scheduled (20%), Qualified to buy (40%), Presentation scheduled (60%), Decision maker bought-in (80%), Contract sent (90%), Closed won (100%) and Closed lost (0%).
Those deal stages describe a longer sale than "they emailed, I quoted, they booked". A local firm that copies "Presentation scheduled" into a cleaning business will stare at empty columns. Use the lead stages as a hint, then rename them.
HubSpot says a Professional or Enterprise subscription is required to manage lead pipelines. If a free setup will not let you edit them, that is a product limit. A simple list with the five stages above is enough.
The spreadsheet tab is called Pipeline. It was last opened in June.
If you're still choosing a tool, the comparison in HubSpot, Pipedrive or something simpler is the longer read. The Monday check doesn't depend on that choice.
Ten minutes: rename your stages to New, Replied, Quoted, Booked, and Not this time, or to the five actions you take. Don't add a sixth yet.
The five-minute checklist
Do this once, at the start of Monday, before you open the rest of the inbox. If Monday is a job day, do it the evening before, or first thing Tuesday. The day matters less than the repeat.
| Minute | What you look at | What you write down |
|---|---|---|
| First | Enquiries that arrived since the last check | Name, what they want, how to reach them, and whether a useful reply has already gone |
| Second | Anything still sitting at New | A next step for today, or a move to Not this time if you have already decided |
| Third | Quotes and proposals with no answer | The date you sent it, and whether one polite nudge is now due |
| Fourth | Jobs where you promised a call, a visit or a date | The promise, and whether you have kept it |
| Fifth | The whole list, one last look | Three names, in order, for this morning |
The fifth minute is the point. Admiring the board and acting on it are different things. Three names is deliberate.
Ten names becomes a wish. If the week is quiet and you've only one live enquiry, write one name and stop. The weekly pipeline habit is the glance, not a performance of being busy.
Ten minutes: run the five rows once, on paper, even if the list is only four names.
What "gone quiet" should mean
Deals that have gone quiet need a rule you set in advance, or you will either pester people or forget them.
A practical rule for a service business:
- If they have not had a first reply, they are not "quiet". They are waiting. That is the top of today's list.
- If you sent a quote and heard nothing, one follow-up is normal. The wording and the gap belong in how to follow up a lead. Do that follow-up from the Monday check when the quote is old enough that a nudge is polite.
- If you have followed up once and they still have not replied, move them to Not this time, with a note of the date. You can reopen the record if they come back. You do not leave them in Quoted for a season.
Pipedrive has a feature for the "sitting too long" problem. On the pipeline design page, rotting highlights deals that stay in a stage for too long. On the pipeline view page, the same idea is described as highlighting deals that have not been updated recently.
You do not need that feature to copy the behaviour. During minute three, anything you have not touched since the previous Monday is a candidate for a nudge or a close.
When a piece of work is finished, mark it. Pipedrive's pipeline view says you mark a deal Won or Lost, and closed deals leave the active view. You can still filter them later.
That's the right shape for a small list too. Booked work shouldn't sit in the "please chase" column, or the Monday check turns into noise.
The quote file called "FINAL v3 use this one" is a stage. It just isn't written down.
Ten minutes: pick every quote older than a fortnight and mark it "nudge" or "close".
Keep one list, and keep it true
The check falls apart when the same person exists in three places: a chat on your phone, a form in your email, and a scribble on a pad. One place for every lead is the fix for that. Until then, the Monday check includes a blunt first step: tip every stray note into the list before you judge it. A name that is only in a text message will not get a follow-up.
Pipedrive's pipeline view says a deal can only exist in one pipeline at a time, and the design article warns that moving deals across pipelines can affect reporting. Don't invent a second board for website leads and a third for phone leads unless the work is a different process.
There's a reason to correct the list while you're in it, quite apart from winning the job. The ICO's page on the accuracy principle says personal data should be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. For you, that means fixing a wrong number or a wrong job in minute one.
The clause detail is in the FAQ. The Monday check isn't a legal ritual. You're already looking, so make the record true.
Ten minutes: correct one record you know is stale. Write what you changed.
What not to do with the five minutes
Do not redesign the stages on a Monday. Change names on a quiet Friday if a stage has become meaningless. Doing it in the check means you spend the five minutes moving cards and still have no call list.
Do not delete a stage to tidy up. Pipedrive's design article is blunt: deleting a stage also deletes the deals in that stage. Move the live enquiries first, wherever you work. Closing them as Not this time is safer than deleting the history of people you have already spoken to.
Do not turn it into a meeting. If two of you share the work, one person reads the list and the other says who they will ring. A pipeline meeting with slides, for a firm of you and the van, is how Monday gets a reputation.
Don't score yourself. Some weeks the honest result is "two quotes to nudge, and one new enquiry to ring before 10". Write that down and go.
Ten minutes: if you're tempted to rename stages today, write the new names on paper and leave the live list alone until Friday.
After the check: three calls, then the day
The three names from minute five become the morning. Who should I call next? goes further on how a CRM can order that list for you. If you are doing it by hand, order them like this:
- Someone who enquired and has not had a proper reply.
- Someone you promised to contact, where the promise is now due.
- Someone with a quote out, where a single nudge is fair.
Then stop. Do those three before you answer random email. The rest of the pipeline can wait until next Monday unless a brand-new enquiry arrives, in which case it jumps the queue the same day.
New, unanswered enquiries are not a weekly item. They are a today item. The Monday check is the safety net for everything the week tried to bury.
On paper, put the date at the top, a count per stage, and the three names with the sentence you will send. Keep the old sheets for a month. The quotes that are still sitting there are the ones to close.
Ten minutes: write today's three names in that order, then make the first call before you open other email.
The first Monday, when the list is a mess
The first check rarely takes five minutes, and that is not a failure. You are collecting scraps. Open the inbox, the texts, the notebook and the chat tool, and write one line per person who might still be waiting.
Resist the urge to quote them during this pass. Capture first, decide second.
For each line, fill four fields and leave the rest:
- Who. A name, or "caller, withheld" if that is all you have.
- What. The job in their words, shortened. "End of tenancy, two-bed, Friday."
- Stage. Your rough guess from the five names above. If you're unsure, it's New.
- Next step. A verb and a day. "Ring Tuesday." "Send quote today." "Close, no reply since August."
When a line has no way to contact the person, it cannot sit at New forever. Either you still have a channel (reply on the same text, the same email, the same chat) or you do not. If you do not, move it to Not this time and note why. A lead you cannot reach is not a lead you are "working".
The first list will look uneven. Next week the gaps should be smaller, because new enquiries arrive with the four fields already filled. If you've a colleague, one person owns the check. Shared ownership usually means nobody opens it.
Ten minutes: tip every stray name from texts and email onto one page. Don't quote anyone during this pass.
A blank you can copy
Use this shape in a note on your phone if you do not want a spreadsheet. Repeat the block per person. Delete the prompts once you have done it twice and the order is in your head.
- Name:
- Came in by (site, phone, email, message):
- What they asked:
- Stage today:
- Last thing we sent, and the date:
- Next step and the day:
- Anything in the record that is wrong:
The "anything wrong" line is optional and often blank. Keep it so the accuracy tidy-up has a place to land. A wrong postcode found on Monday is cheaper than a wasted visit on Thursday.
Once the blocks exist, the five minutes are a sort, not a reconstruction. Minute one is new blocks. Minutes two to four are old blocks whose next step is blank or overdue. Minute five is starring three of them.
Ten minutes: copy the blank into a phone note and fill it for one real enquiry.
Make next Monday easier than this one
The first check is the slow one, because you are building the list. The second is faster. By the fourth, five minutes is realistic if every new enquiry landed in the same place during the week.
During the week, the only discipline is this. When an enquiry arrives, put it on the list the same day, at New, with a way to contact them. When you reply, move the stage.
When you send a price, move it to Quoted and write the date. That's the whole admin. The Monday check then reads a list that's already roughly true, and your five minutes go on decisions.
By the fourth Monday the list is waiting when you pick up the phone. You star three names and ring them before the inbox.
Ten minutes: put today's new enquiry on the list before you close the laptop, with a stage and a next step.
Common questions
How many stages does a small business need?
As many as the real steps in your sale, and no more. Pipedrive's own help says too many stages make a pipeline harder to scan, and it suggests clear, action-based names. Many service firms can see the week with five: new, replied, quoted, booked, and not this time.
What if I don't use HubSpot or Pipedrive?
You don't need either product to do the check. A notebook, a spreadsheet or a simple lead list works if every enquiry has a stage, a date and a next step. The habit is the point. The software is optional. HubSpot's own defaults, if you do use it, are a longer sales board with stage probabilities, plus a simpler lead board: New, Attempting, Connected, Qualified, Disqualified. A Professional or Enterprise subscription is required there to manage lead pipelines. Copy the idea of a short board, not their column names.
What does the accuracy principle change on a Monday?
The ICO says personal data should be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. Take reasonable steps so a record isn't incorrect or misleading as a matter of fact, know where it came from, and correct it when you find it's wrong. If someone challenges a record, consider that challenge and note what you changed. On a Monday that means fixing a wrong number or a wrong job while you're already looking. It isn't a separate legal meeting.
What should I do with an enquiry that has not moved?
Give it one next step, dated today, or close it. A lead with no next step is how work goes cold. If you already nudged them once and they did not reply, decide whether a second nudge is fair or whether you are done.
Is five minutes enough?
Five minutes is enough to see the list and pick three people to contact. It is not enough to rewrite your stages, redesign a CRM or have the calls themselves. Do the calls after the check, starting with the three names you wrote down.
Should I delete old enquiries to make the list shorter?
Close them as booked or not going ahead, and keep the record. Deleting is how you lose the fact that someone already heard from you. On Pipedrive, deleting a stage also deletes the deals in that stage, which is a sharp reason to rename a stage rather than throw it away.