Free contractor operations tool
A contractor sales pipeline template that shows where every deal really stands
In twenty years I have asked a thousand reps how many deals they have working. I always get a confident number. Then I ask where each one actually stands — and I get a shrug dressed up as optimism. That shrug is what your forecast is built on. This free sales pipeline template ends it: it lays out the deal stages, the rule for moving a deal, who owns it, and the follow-up that keeps it alive — so “I've got a lot going on right now” turns into a board you can actually read.
Tell it how you sell and how long your deals take, and it builds the stages for you — ready to drop into a roofing CRM like JobNimbus or GiddyUp, or into a plain spreadsheet if that is where your crew already lives. Every stage comes with what it means, who owns it, the next step, and what has to be true before a deal moves forward.
Created by Tim Nussbeck — founder of GhostRep, 20+ years in home improvement sales and operations, 1,000+ reps trained.
Real-time
see stalled deals before forecast review — not after the month is gone
10–15%
a 90-day dead-lead re-engagement converts, with zero new marketing spend
Clean > full
20 real deals forecast better than 50 that hide 30 zombies
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Free to use. The output is a starting structure — adjust stage names to match your CRM and the way your deals actually move before you roll it out to the team.
What real-time visibility actually means
Forget the dashboards for a second. Real-time visibility just means you can walk in Monday morning and answer one question without calling anybody: where is the money right now? A real pipeline tells you, at a glance, that 14 jobs are sitting on adjuster meetings, 6 haven't been touched in 11 days, and 3 are ready to sign this week. You see the stuck deals before they cost you the month — not after, standing in a forecast meeting wondering what happened.
I have never been able to get that out of a rep's gut. “How's it looking?” “Good, real good.” That tells me nothing. A board with stages, owners, and stale dates tells me everything — and it turns your forecast from a guess into something you'd bet payroll on. That same clean board is what makes honest sales forecasting possible in the first place.
The stages, by sales model
The fastest way to kill a pipeline is to copy someone else's stages. I've watched it happen a dozen times: an insurance crew drops in a generic board with no adjuster-meeting stage, and within two weeks the reps who live in that step have quietly stopped updating it. A retail crew crams eight stages onto a two-week deal and all they've built is busywork. Your board has to match the way yourdeals actually move. Here are the two I hand contractors most.
Insurance restoration (storm)
Built around the adjuster milestone, where most claims stall.
- 1New Lead
- 2Inspection Scheduled
- 3Inspection Complete
- 4Adjuster Meeting Scheduled
- 5Adjuster Meeting Complete
- 6Approved / Scope Confirmed
- 7Contract Signed
- 8In Production
Retail replacement
Shorter motion — the leak is usually the post-estimate follow-up.
- 1New Lead
- 2Inspection Scheduled
- 3Estimate Delivered
- 4Follow-Up Active
- 5Contract Signed
- 6In Production
What actually moves a deal forward (not what a rep tried)
This is the one that separates a board you can trust from one you can't, and it took me years to get strict about it. A deal only moves when something is true — not when a rep made an effort. Let reps advance deals because they “reached out,” and the whole board drifts toward the close while nothing real is happening. Hold the line on the outcome, and it stops lying to you. Same deal, two very different standards:
The homeowner has the written, line-item proposal in hand — emailed or left on site.
A verbal number isn’t a proposal. Stage on the document, not the conversation.
Adjuster meeting is scheduled and confirmed on both sides, on the calendar.
Effort isn’t an outcome. Confirmation is what actually moves the claim.
Signed contract uploaded and deposit (or insurance approval) collected.
Vague heat inflates the pipeline. A signature is the only thing that closes a stage.
Follow-up rules that keep deals from dying
Almost no deal dies on a “no.” They die in the quiet — somewhere between the inspection and the estimate, when a homeowner went cold and nobody circled back. Set these rules once and the board does the nagging for you, so a deal can't slip under the radar.
- 1
One owner, one next action — always
Every open deal has a single owner and a single scheduled next step. When two people share a deal, each assumes the other has it — and that's how a job sits untouched for three weeks.
- 2
The 14-day stale rule
Any deal with no logged activity in 14 days auto-generates a required follow-up task. Pair it with the follow-up generator so the task is a real, personal message — not a checkbox.
- 3
Follow-up cadence by stage, not by mood
Tie cadence to the cycle: a storm deal gets touched daily near the adjuster meeting; a retail estimate gets a day-1, day-3, day-7 sequence. The stage decides the rhythm, so nothing depends on a rep remembering.
- 4
The 30-day review-or-kill rule
At 30 days with no movement, a deal gets one deliberate contact attempt or it's closed as lost. Killing it isn't losing it — dead leads route into a 90-day re-engagement sequence that quietly converts 10–15%.
A clean pipeline beats a full one
Every owner I know is proud of a fat pipeline. It's a trap. With no rule for killing dead deals, the board fills up with jobs that are never going to close — and that fake number is exactly what you build next month's plan on. Decide the kill line before you're attached to a specific job: no answer after three real tries, or no movement past the date that fits your cycle. I'll take a board of 20 deals I believe over 50 where I'm kidding myself, every single time.
What I tell every owner
Your weekly pipeline review isn't paperwork — it's the best coaching hour you've got. Every stale deal is a real conversation about a real job, and every blank stage tells you which rep needs help before the month slips. Run it deal by deal and the board stops being a report you dread and starts being how you actually run the place.
What the visibility looks like
Here's a single glance at a clean restoration board — counts by stage, projected close, and the one number that turns a review into a decision: the bottleneck.
1 · New Lead 87 deals
2 · Inspection Scheduled 34
3 · Pending Proposal 19
4 · Proposal Presented 22 · projected close 9
5 · Contract Signed 11 · $127,400
30-day projected $218,000
⚠ Bottleneck: Stage 3 inspect-to-proposal lag averaging 4.2 days (target 48 hrs).
Look at what that board just told you without anyone asking: it's not the revenue number — it's the bottleneck. Stage 3 is dragging, and that's where I'd spend Monday. Run that board in your CRM, give every deal real context — property details, owner history, prior claims — with Job Intel, and you stop managing your business on a hunch.
Frequently asked questions
What stages should a roofing sales pipeline have?
Match it to how you actually sell. A storm/insurance crew needs the adjuster milestone built in: New Lead → Inspection Scheduled → Inspection Done → Adjuster Meeting Set → Adjuster Meeting Done → Approved → Contract Signed → In Production. A retail crew runs shorter — New Lead → Inspection Scheduled → Estimate Delivered → Following Up → Contract Signed → In Production. The rule I give every owner: add a stage only where a real decision or hand-off happens, and rip out any stage your reps skip in real life. Borrowed stages are the fastest way to get a board nobody updates.
Can I run this in a spreadsheet instead of a CRM?
Yes — and plenty of good crews still do. The structure (stage, who owns it, the next step, what has to be true to advance, the stale date) works as columns in a Google Sheet just as well as it does in a roofing CRM like JobNimbus or GiddyUp. Start in a spreadsheet if that is what gets the team actually logging deals. Move to a CRM when updating the sheet by hand becomes the thing that is slowing you down, not when a salesperson tells you to.
How do I stop reps from inflating their pipeline?
Make every stage move on an outcome, not on effort. “I called him about the adjuster meeting” does not move a deal. “Adjuster meeting is on the calendar, confirmed both ways” does. The day you stop letting reps advance deals because they tried, the board starts telling you the truth — and your forecast stops being a wish list. This one change fixes most bad forecasts I have seen.
How often should I clean the pipeline?
Every week, deal by deal, with the rep — and treat it as coaching, not a paperwork check. Two hard rules keep it honest: anything with no activity in 14 days gets a follow-up task automatically, and anything sitting at 30 days gets one real contact attempt or it gets closed out. Twenty live deals you can trust beat fifty where half are ghosts. A clean board is worth more than a full one, every time.
When should I kill a deal?
Decide the rule before you are emotional about a specific job: no answer after three real attempts, or no movement past whatever dead line matches your cycle — usually 30 to 45 days. Killing a deal is not losing it. Dead leads drop into a 90-day re-engagement list, and that list quietly closes 10–15% with no new ad spend — people change their mind, their insurance situation changes, a neighbor gets a new roof. A defined kill rule is the only thing that keeps your pipeline number believable.
What does “real-time visibility” actually buy me?
It means you can walk in any morning and answer one question without guessing: where is the money right now? How many jobs are stuck waiting on an adjuster, which ones went quiet, what is actually signing this week. When every deal has a stage, an owner, and a stale date, the board answers that for you. Without it, you are running your business on “I’ve got a lot going on right now” — and that has never once been true.