Simple Pipeline: Lead → Estimate → Booked

If you're tracking leads in your head, on sticky notes, or in a spreadsheet you never open, you're losing money. Not because you're disorganized — because you're human, and humans forget things when they're busy.

A pipeline is just a visual way to see every potential job and where it stands. Think of it as a board with columns: new leads on the left, completed jobs on the right, and everything in between.

The four stages you actually need

Don't overcomplicate this. For most service businesses, four stages cover 90% of your workflow:

New Lead — Someone called, submitted a form, or was referred. You haven't talked to them yet.
Estimate Sent — You've assessed the job and sent a price. Ball's in their court.
Booked — They said yes. The job is scheduled.
Completed — Job's done, invoice sent or paid.

That's it. You can always add stages later (like "Waiting on Parts" or "Insurance Pending"), but start simple.

Setting this up in HubSpot

HubSpot's free CRM has a built-in pipeline feature. Here's how to set it up:

Create your pipeline

Go to Sales → Deals → Pipeline settings.
Delete the default stages and create the four listed above.
Set your default pipeline view to Board (Kanban-style) so you can see deals as cards.

Add your existing deals

Spend 15 minutes adding any current leads, open estimates, and booked jobs. For each deal, include:

Contact name and phone number
What the job is (brief description)
Estimated value (even a rough number helps)
Which stage it's in right now

Set up basic automation

The free tier gives you limited automation, but even one workflow helps:

When a deal moves to "Estimate Sent": Automatically create a task to follow up in 3 days if the deal hasn't moved.

This single automation catches the deals that would otherwise slip through the cracks — the estimates you sent but never followed up on.

How to use it daily

The pipeline only works if you check it. Build these habits:

Morning (2 minutes): Open HubSpot, look at your board. Any new leads to call? Any estimates pending more than 3 days?

After every call: Move the deal to its new stage. Update the notes. Takes 30 seconds.

Friday (5 minutes): Review your pipeline. How many leads came in this week? How many converted? Where are deals getting stuck?

The numbers that matter

Once you've used your pipeline for a month, you'll start seeing patterns:

Conversion rate: What percentage of leads turn into booked jobs?
Average deal value: What's a typical job worth?
Stall point: Where do most deals die? (Usually "Estimate Sent" — which means your follow-up needs work.)
Time to close: How long from first contact to booked?

These numbers tell you exactly where to focus. If most deals die at the estimate stage, you don't need more leads — you need better follow-up. If your time-to-close is long, maybe you need faster estimates.

Why this beats a spreadsheet

Spreadsheets work until they don't. They're fine when you have 5 open deals. When you hit 20 or 30, things start falling through. A CRM pipeline gives you:

A visual overview without scrolling through rows
Automatic reminders when deals go stale
A history of every interaction with each contact
Numbers you can actually use to make decisions

And the free tier of HubSpot is genuinely free — no credit card, no trial expiration.

Start today

Open HubSpot, create four pipeline stages, and add your current deals. It'll take 20 minutes. By next Friday, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Ready to get started? See our HubSpot quick start on the tools page.