Sales Pipeline for a Small Agency: Stages and Weekly Review
A sales pipeline for a small agency, with five stages, the buyer action that moves each deal and a 30-minute weekly review.
Robbert Veer, Founder
7 min read
A sales pipeline is a list of your open deals, sorted by how far each buyer has come toward signing. For a small agency, five stages are enough. They run from the first reply to a signed client, and a deal moves only when the owner does something. A 30-minute review each week keeps it honest.
What is a sales pipeline?
A sales pipeline is a view of every open deal and the stage it has reached. A deal enters at one end and leaves as won or lost.
For an agency, the pipeline answers three questions each week. How many real conversations do I have? Which ones are stuck? Will there be enough work in two months?
A list and a pipeline are two different things. The 200 businesses you plan to write to are a list. The 6 owners who wrote back are a pipeline.
What are the sales pipeline stages for an agency?
An agency needs five stages, and the first one starts at the reply. Two steps come before the pipeline and are counted on their own.
| Stage | A deal enters when | Our starting time limit |
|---|---|---|
| Before the pipeline, shortlisted | You have checked the website and it is weak | None |
| Before the pipeline, in sequence | The first letter has gone out | 19 working days |
| 1. Replied | The owner answers with interest or a question | 3 working days |
| 2. Call booked | The owner agrees to a time | 7 days |
| 3. Call held | The owner attends and agrees to a next step | 3 working days |
| 4. Proposal sent | The owner asks for a proposal and you send it | 14 days |
| 5. Won | The owner signs and pays the deposit | None |
| Lost | The owner says no, or a time limit passes twice | None |
The time limits are our own starting rules. Change them once you have a few months of your own numbers. The limit for a business in sequence is the length of the six-step sequence your Outbound Machine runs in Leadodo.
Most stage lists start at prospecting and count every name on the list. An earlier campaign in our write-up on cold outreach shows the problem with that. The agency It'sJustContent emailed 1,382 Dutch companies.
| Step | Count |
|---|---|
| Companies emailed | 1,382 |
| Positive replies | 5, or 0.36% |
| Sales calls | 3 |
| Clients | 0 |
Counted from the list, that pipeline held 1,382 names. Counted from the reply, it held 5. The second number is the one that tells you how much work is coming.
What moves a deal from one stage to the next?
A deal moves when the buyer acts. A proposal that nobody asked for leaves the deal where it was.
Three rules keep the stages honest.
- Every deal has one next step with a date. "Follow up sometime" is a wish. "Call Thursday at 2:00" is a step.
- The buyer owns the step where possible. "The owner sends the logins by Friday" tells you more than "I will chase."
- A deal with no dated step is stuck. Mark it at the weekly review and deal with it there.
Each move has its own skill. Our guide to appointment setting covers the reply and the booked call. Our discovery call questions cover the call. The web design proposal template covers the proposal, and our post on sales objections helps with deals that stall after it.
How to build a sales pipeline in an afternoon
- Open a spreadsheet. One row per deal. The first four columns are business, owner, stage and value. Add three more for the date the deal entered its stage, the next step and the date of that step.
- Write down the five stages. Put the entry rule for each one at the top of the sheet.
- Add every owner who has replied in the last 60 days. Leave out everyone who has not.
- Give each deal one next step and a date.
- Mark every deal that is past its time limit.
- Book the weekly review. Thirty minutes, the same slot each week.
A spreadsheet is enough while you have fewer than 20 open deals. That figure is our rule of thumb. Move to a CRM when two people need to see the same deals, or when dated steps start to slip.
The top of the pipeline is a separate job. Businesses reach the Replied stage through outreach, and our guide to outbound sales covers the process from list to booked call.
What does a weekly pipeline review look like?
The review takes 30 minutes and asks five questions in the same order every week.
| Minutes | Question | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | What came in? | Add each reply from the week as a new deal |
| 10 | What moved? | Update the stage and the date for each deal the buyer moved |
| 5 | What is stuck? | List the deals past their time limit, then send one message to each or close it |
| 5 | What is next? | Check that every open deal has one next step with a date |
| 5 | Is the top full enough? | Count the deals in Replied and Call booked, and decide how many businesses to contact this week |
Here is a review on a made-up board. The businesses are fiction.
| Deal | Stage | Days in stage | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bluebird Bakery | Replied | 1 | Offer two times today |
| Lakeshore Dental | Call booked | 2 | Call on Tuesday at 10:00 |
| Castellano Roofing | Call held | 6 | None written down |
| Harborview Dental | Proposal sent | 16 | Ask for a decision |
| Tulsa Family Law | Proposal sent | 4 | Call on Thursday |
The review finds three things. Castellano Roofing is past the 3 working days for Call held and has no next step, so it gets a proposal date today. Harborview Dental is past 14 days, so it gets one direct question about the decision. And only one deal sits in Replied, which means more letters need to go out this week.
How many deals does an agency need in its pipeline?
Work backward from the clients you want, using your own counts. Averages from large sales teams will not fit a small agency.
A worked example, with made-up numbers. Suppose your last six months show 8 calls held, 4 proposals sent and 2 clients won. One client took 4 held calls, since 8 divided by 2 is 4. To win 3 clients next quarter you need about 12 held calls, which is 3 times 4.
Then step back one more stage. In the It'sJustContent campaign, 5 positive replies became 3 sales calls. At that ratio, 12 held calls need 20 positive replies, since 12 divided by 0.6 is 20. That ratio comes from one Dutch email campaign, so replace it with your own as soon as you can.
The number of replies depends on who you contact. In our test of 3,570 cold emails to Dutch companies, businesses with the weakest 20% of websites replied positively about 3.2 times as often as a random sample of the rest. Leadodo works on that part, before the pipeline begins. It finds businesses, scores their websites and runs outreach to the ones with the weakest sites.
Questions
What is the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?
A pipeline shows each open deal and its stage, and you use it to decide what to do next. A funnel shows how many deals survive from one stage to the next. Both draw on the same records. The pipeline is the working view and the funnel is the report.
Do I need a CRM to run a sales pipeline?
No. A spreadsheet with one row per deal works while you have fewer than 20 open deals, by our rule of thumb. A CRM starts to pay off when two or more people work the same deals.
How often should I review my pipeline?
Once a week, for 30 minutes, in the same slot. A weekly rhythm is short enough to catch a stuck deal within its time limit. Monthly reviews find stuck deals after they are already lost.
When should I remove a deal from the pipeline?
Remove a deal when the owner says no, or when it has passed its time limit twice without an answer. Move it to Lost with a one-line reason. A pipeline full of old deals hides how little is moving.
How many stages should a sales pipeline have?
Five is enough for a small agency. They are Replied, Call booked, Call held, Proposal sent and Won. Add a stage only when deals keep sitting in a state the five do not describe.
Next step. See how Leadodo finds businesses, scores their websites and runs the outreach that comes before your pipeline. See the features.
