| Category | Business Development |
|---|---|
| Time to Run | 10 min |
| Difficulty | Standard |
| Output | Analysis |
| Client-Facing | No — internal use |
It’s Monday morning. You have a general sense of who’s in your pipeline — a few proposals out, a couple of warm leads, someone you keep meaning to follow up with. But you don’t have a clear picture of what’s actually moving, what’s stalled, or where the revenue gaps are. Your pipeline lives in your head and it’s blurrier than you think.
Run this every Monday morning or at the start of your business week. Ten minutes of structured review prevents the “I forgot to follow up” problem that kills more deals than bad pricing ever will.
This is the complete .md skill file. Copy the code block below, save it as weekly-pipeline-review-SKILL.md, and upload it to a Claude project for use.
---
name: weekly-pipeline-review
description: >
Generates a weekly pipeline analysis with stage distribution, stall alerts,
revenue projection, and prioritized action items. Trigger: every Monday
morning or start of business week.
metadata:
author: "Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders"
version: "1.0.0"
date: "2026-04-25"
---
# Weekly Pipeline Review
Produce a structured weekly analysis of your business development pipeline that surfaces stalled deals, identifies follow-up priorities, and gives you a realistic revenue forecast.
**Core Principle: Pipeline health is measured by movement, not volume. Five prospects who advanced this week matter more than twenty who didn’t. Every review must surface what moved, what stalled, and what needs a push — not just list what exists.**
## What This Skill Does
**Job 1: Pipeline Snapshot.** It takes your raw prospect list and organizes it into a stage-by-stage view with counts, ages, and last-contact dates. This is the "here’s what you’re working with" picture that most solo consultants never have.
**Job 2: Stall Detection.** It flags prospects that haven’t moved in too long. The thresholds vary by stage — a lead that’s been cold for 14 days is different from a proposal that’s been sitting for 14 days. The skill applies stage-appropriate urgency.
**Job 3: Action Prioritization.** It produces a ranked list of exactly what to do this week, in what order, with specific next-step language. Not "follow up with Sarah" but "Send Sarah the case study she asked about on March 3rd and ask for a decision by Friday."
## Section 1: Pipeline Snapshot
Build a summary table showing:
| Stage | Count | Oldest | Total Est. Value |
|-------|-------|--------|-----------------|
| Lead (unqualified) | [n] | [days since first contact] | — |
| Discovery scheduled | [n] | [days since scheduled] | — |
| Proposal sent | [n] | [days since sent] | [\$X] |
| Negotiating | [n] | [days in negotiation] | [\$X] |
| Verbal yes (pending contract) | [n] | [days since verbal] | [\$X] |
Below the table, write a 2–3 sentence narrative: "Your pipeline has [n] active prospects across [n] stages. The majority are in [stage], which means [interpretation]. [One notable observation]."
## Section 2: Movement Since Last Week
For each prospect, classify as:
- **Advanced** — moved to a new stage
- **Active** — communication happened but stage didn’t change
- **Static** — no movement, no communication
- **New** — entered the pipeline this week
- **Lost** — explicitly declined or went silent past the threshold
List only Advanced, New, and Lost by name. Summarize Active and Static as counts. This keeps the review focused on what changed.
## Section 3: Stall Alerts
Flag any prospect where days since last contact exceeds the stage threshold:
- Lead: 10 days
- Discovery scheduled: 5 days (they should be on the calendar)
- Proposal sent: 7 days
- Negotiating: 5 days
- Verbal yes: 3 days
For each stalled prospect, include:
- Name and stage
- Days since last contact
- Recommended action (specific — "call, don’t email" or "send the proposal recap" or "this one’s dead — archive it")
## Section 4: Revenue Forecast
Calculate a weighted pipeline value:
- Lead: 10% probability
- Discovery scheduled: 25%
- Proposal sent: 40%
- Negotiating: 60%
- Verbal yes: 85%
Show: Total pipeline value (unweighted) and Weighted forecast. Add a 1-sentence interpretation: "At current conversion, you’re looking at roughly [\$X] in new revenue over the next 30–60 days."
Do not present these as guarantees. Present as a working estimate based on current stage distribution.
## Section 5: This Week’s Actions
Produce a prioritized action list (max 5 items). Each action gets:
- **Priority rank** (1–5)
- **Prospect name**
- **Action** — specific next step with exact language where applicable
- **Signal** — what in the analysis triggered this action
- **Deadline** — when this should happen (day of week)
Priority order: stalled proposals first, then stalled negotiations, then discovery follow-ups, then lead nurturing. Revenue-weighted urgency drives the ranking.
## Section 6: What to Skip / What to Watch For
**Leave alone:** Prospects in active conversation who are on track. Don’t follow up just because it’s Monday — follow up because something stalled or a threshold was crossed. Over-contacting warm prospects is worse than under-contacting cold ones.
**Watch for:** If more than half your pipeline is in the "lead" stage with nothing in proposal or negotiation, you have a conversion bottleneck, not a lead generation problem. Note this pattern when it appears.
## Quality Check (Internal — never shown to the user)
| Check | Question |
|-------|----------|
| Complete | Is every prospect from the input accounted for in the snapshot? |
| Honest | Are stalled deals flagged, not hidden? |
| Specific | Does each action item include exact next-step language, not vague prompts? |
| Prioritized | Are actions ranked by revenue impact, not alphabetically or by ease? |
| Realistic | Does the revenue forecast use weighted probabilities, not wishful thinking? |
**Enforcement:** Run all five checks. Identify the weakest section. Rewrite it. Verify the rewrite landed. If the actions are vague ("follow up with John"), replace them with specific language ("Send John the case study and ask for a call Thursday"). User sees only the finished analysis.
## Rules
- Never inflate pipeline value. If a prospect is stalled, the probability drops — don’t pretend a 30-day-old proposal is still at 40%.
- Bold every stall alert — these are the highest-value actions of the week.
- Max 5 action items. If there are more, the consultant won’t do any of them. Prioritize ruthlessly.
- Never recommend "checking in" as an action. Every follow-up must include something of value — a resource, an answer, a specific question.
- Include the "dead" classification. Prospects who should be archived need to be named, not carried forever.
- Keep the entire analysis under 600 words. This is a Monday morning scan, not a board deck.
## Output Format
| Stage | Count | Oldest | Est. Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | [n] | [n] days | — |
| Discovery | [n] | [n] days | — |
| Proposal Sent | [n] | [n] days | [\$X] |
| Negotiating | [n] | [n] days | [\$X] |
| Verbal Yes | [n] | [n] days | [\$X] |
[2–3 sentence narrative interpretation]
## What Makes This Different
Most pipeline reviews are a list of names and stages — a static inventory that tells you what exists but not what’s wrong. This skill measures movement and applies stage-specific stall thresholds, which means it catches the deal that’s quietly dying three weeks before you’d notice on your own. The weighted revenue forecast also prevents the most common solo consultant delusion: counting unweighted pipeline value as if it’s real money.
---
Copyright (c) 2026 Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders
This skill is licensed for your personal and business use. You may run this skill inside your own practice and share the outputs it produces with your team and clients. "Your practice" includes employees and contractors engaged to perform work for your business under your direction — virtual assistants, operations support, bookkeepers, and similar team members.
You may not share, distribute, resell, or repackage the skill file itself — including this SKILL.md document, its prompts, frameworks, and structure — with anyone outside your practice. This includes peer practitioners, other consultants who would use it in their own client work, and anyone outside your operating team. Written permission from Kathryn Brown ([email protected]) is required for any redistribution.
This skill is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, express or implied.
A weekly pipeline analysis covering stage distribution with counts and values, movement classification, stall alerts with specific thresholds, a weighted revenue forecast, and a prioritized action list with exact next steps. Under 600 words. Designed for a Monday morning ten-minute review that sets your BD priorities for the week.