Industries
The pipelines I know by heart.
The method is the same in every business: find where deals leak, fix the process, hand back a system the team can run. What changes is the vocabulary, the stages, and the two places that particular pipeline loses people. These are the ones I have built inside.
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// The run, and the two joints that leak
- Staffing & recruitmentBrief → Shortlist → Interview → Offer out → Placement → Repeat
- Financial advisers & insurance brokersLead → FNA → Propose plan → Underwriting → Annual Review
- SaaS & payment providersDemo → Proposal → Closed won → Compliance → Go live → Expansion
- Law firmsEnquiry → Consult → Letter out → Matter open → Billed → Repeat
- Education & trainingEnquiry → Contacted → Applied → Offer → Enrolled → Re-enrolled
Staffing & recruitment
The recruitment pipeline dies at offer out.
Brief → shortlist → interview → offer out → placement → repeat. Agencies are built on relationships and memory, which works until the second consultant starts. Then offers sit with nobody’s name against them, the placement dies in the silence between candidate and client, and the placed client is never asked for the next brief.
Pitch to placement16%→30%+Read the page →
Financial advisers & insurance brokers
The adviser pipeline leaks after the yes.
Lead → FNA → propose plan → underwriting → annual review. Most practices sell well. Then the application drags through an operation nobody designed, the transfer waits on a form nobody owns, and the book you already have only phones when something’s wrong.
Underwriting turnaround40–90 days→~1 monthRead the page →
SaaS & payment providers
The merchant said yes. The revenue didn’t.
Demo → proposal → closed won → compliance → go live → expansion. Closed-won is the middle of your pipeline, not the end of it, and the half after the signature is the half nobody owns. The KYC pack gets chased instead of collected, four teams hand the merchant to each other by email, and the forecast counts in March what the bank statement sees in June.
Application processing2–4 months→1–4 weeksRead the page →
Law firms
The enquiry was good. The engagement letter is still unsigned.
Enquiry → consult → engagement letter → matter open → billed → repeat instruction. Firms measure billable hours precisely and the pipeline that feeds them not at all. Nearly half of firms can’t be reached by phone; the letter goes out and chasing it is nobody’s billable hour; the matter closes and so does the relationship. It is the same shape as an unowned offer in a staffing agency, and it costs the same way.
Read the page →
Education & training
The enrolment pipeline leaks before anyone picks up.
Enquiry → contacted → applied → offer → enrolled → re-enrolled. Campus, online or hybrid, the shape is the same: enquiries arrive around the clock, the call back goes out in office hours, three days later, in one language. Most of them go to voicemail, and the answer on the table is always more leads. It’s rarely more leads. It’s the same leads, reached at an hour they could answer.
Enquiry to enrolment10%→40%Read the page →
Everything else
Not one of these? The leak is still in one of five places.
I have built sales operations in professional services as well, and the diagnosis starts the same way regardless of what you sell. Ten questions is usually enough to say which of the five places your pipeline is losing people, or whether they are lost on the way in, and four numbers say what that costs.
Free · about ninety secondsTake the Leak Cost CheckTen questions name which of the five places is losing them, or whether they are lost on the way in. Four numbers put a figure on it.
The menuWhat I fix, and what it costsSixteen problems, each at a flat price, in the same four places whatever you sell: after the first call, inside the pipeline, after the yes, and in whoever is running it.
Your pipeline, drawn properly. Then fixed.
No charge. Tell me how a deal moves through your business and I’ll tell you where I think it stalls.