An insurance sales pipeline template
Seven stages, each with a written rule for what gets in and what gets out. Free CSV, opens in Excel or Google Sheets, no email address required.
Most brokerage pipelines fail the same way: the stages are named after how the producer feels about the deal rather than after something that observably happened. "Warm" is not a stage. "They replied and stated a need" is.
Why entry and exit criteria are the whole point
A stage without a written exit rule becomes a parking space. Opportunities arrive, the producer intends to come back to them, and six weeks later the pipeline reports a healthy number that nobody believes.
The test is simple: can somebody who is not you look at an opportunity and say which stage it belongs in, without asking? If not, the criteria are not written well enough yet. That is what the two columns are for, and filling them in is most of the value of this sheet.
The second test is typical_days. Once a stage has an expected duration, your stale list writes itself: anything sitting past it needs a decision, not another week.
The columns
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| stage | The stage name. Short, and named after an event not a feeling. |
| stage_order | Where it sits in the sequence. Won and Lost share the last position. |
| entry_criteria | What must be true for an opportunity to arrive here. |
| exit_criteria | What must be true for it to leave. If you cannot write this, the stage is not real. |
| owner | Who is working it. One name. |
| typical_days | How long it should sit here. Anything older is your stale list. |
| next_task | The single next action. |
| opportunity_ref | The record id in your CRM. Not the client name. |
| value | Annual premium or commission, whichever you manage to. |
| probability_pct | Your own number. Consistency matters more than accuracy. |
| notes | Anything that changes the next conversation. |
On the Lost stage
Its exit criterion is "reason recorded", and that is not bureaucracy. A loss with no reason is the only kind with no future value: you cannot tell whether you are losing on price, on speed, on coverage or on nobody following up, and those need completely different responses. If you record one thing about a lost deal, record why.
Running it in software instead
Once the stages are defined, a spreadsheet stops being the right home for them. CovioIQ ships these seven stages with probability-weighted pipeline value and a stale-deal view, and you can see it on a sample book without signing up.
Related: all templates, what happens after you win, lead scoring.