Marketing Agency Sales Pipeline Template
A retainer and project pipeline that puts scope lock before the pitch, so you stop giving away strategy for free.
The stages
Each stage states what is true about a deal sitting in it, and the one testable thing that has to happen before it moves. If the exit criterion is not met, the deal does not advance, whatever the rep believes.
Enquiry Received
10% probability1 to 3 daysA referral, inbound form or outbound reply has landed. Half of these are people benchmarking prices with no intention of moving.
You have confirmed the enquiry comes from someone who can approve spend, and that their budget expectation is above your minimum engagement size.
Chemistry Call
20% probability3 to 7 daysA first conversation about whether there is a real problem here and whether you want to work with them. No deliverables discussed yet.
The prospect has stated a business objective rather than a deliverable (revenue, pipeline, retention, not "we need TikTok"), a budget range, and the date they need work to start.
Discovery and Audit
35% probability5 to 14 daysYou are inside their accounts and assets, quantifying what is broken. This is real work, so it should only happen after budget is qualified.
You have read access to their analytics, ad accounts or existing assets, and have identified at least two specific gaps with numbers attached.
Proposal and Scope
50% probability5 to 14 daysA written scope with deliverables, timeline and fee is in front of them. Emailing this cold is the most common unforced error in agency sales.
The proposal has been walked through live with the decision maker on the call, and they have responded to the fee with either a specific objection or a date they will confirm by.
Creative Presentation
60% probability7 to 14 daysOptional, and only for deals large enough to justify it. You are presenting a direction, not finished work.
The client has given specific feedback on the creative direction and named every remaining person who must approve the engagement.
Negotiation and Scope Lock
75% probability3 to 10 daysPrice, deliverables and boundaries are being finalised. Everything you concede here comes directly out of your delivery margin.
Scope, number of revision rounds, payment terms and the hourly or daily out-of-scope rate are all agreed in writing.
Signed and Onboarding
100% probability3 to 10 daysMSA and SOW are executed and the account is moving to delivery. The sale is not finished until the first invoice clears.
MSA and SOW countersigned, first invoice paid or PO issued, kickoff booked, and the account team named on the record.
Fields worth tracking
Stages tell you where a deal is. These fields tell you whether it is any good. Add them as custom fields on the pipeline, and make the ones that gate a stage required.
An $8K retainer on a 12-month term and an $8K one-off project are not the same deal. Store both and your pipeline reports in annual contract value instead of a misleading single number.
A multi-select of the services included. It tells you which offers actually sell, which ones you keep pitching and losing, and where your delivery team will be over-committed next quarter.
The most common source of margin leak in creative work. If it is not a field on the deal, it is not in the SOW, and you will do six rounds for the price of two.
Agency referral deals close at multiples of the outbound rate and at higher fees. Track the source and you know where the next hire should go.
Having an agreed number on the record is what makes the awkward conversation in month three a routine one instead of a fight.
Automations worth building
A pipeline that only stores data is a spreadsheet with a nicer view. These are the three workflows that make this pipeline maintain itself.
When a deal reaches Discovery and Audit, automatically send the client the access request checklist (analytics, ad accounts, brand assets) and create a task to chase at 48 hours. Audits stall on access far more often than on analysis.
On entering Proposal and Scope, enrol the decision maker in a three-touch sequence across email and LinkedIn at day 2, day 5 and day 10, and cancel the whole sequence automatically the moment the deal changes stage.
Block any deal moving to Signed while the revision rounds or out-of-scope rate fields are empty. It takes ten seconds to fill in and saves an argument in month three.
Common mistakes with this pipeline
Agencies routinely deliver a full audit and a campaign plan for free, then lose the deal to someone cheaper who executes the plan they just wrote. Put the audit behind a qualified budget, or charge a paid discovery fee.
Once the conversation is about how many posts per month, you are being priced against a freelancer. The chemistry-call exit criteria exists specifically to force the conversation back to a business objective before any number is discussed.
Putting $8K in the deal value field for a 12-month retainer understates your pipeline by an order of magnitude and makes month-to-month forecasting impossible. Track monthly value and term separately, and report on both.