step 3 · build the sales engine

pipeline inspection & build

If you are running sales out of your head, a spreadsheet, and your inbox, this box gives you a real pipeline: the tool installed, your live deals loaded into it, and a review every week that shows you what is real and what is drifting.

is this you?

Six answers on the diagnostic route to this box, and they share a root: nobody can see what is coming. You might have named it as any of these.

• No proper pipeline, so there is nothing to review and the forecast lives in your head.
• Pipeline is ad hoc and you cannot say what will close this month, let alone next.
• No GTM tools at all, so you are flying blind.
• Still on Excel and Outlook, tools that were fine at five deals and buckle at fifty.
• Everything is manual, with no automation anywhere in the sales motion.
• No data on what is actually working (this one can run deeper than a missing dashboard, more on that under Routing).

deliverables

Five things you walk away holding, each a real artefact you can use, not a slide:

• CRM install: your CRM set up around how you sell, Attio or HubSpot as you choose, replacing Excel and Outlook where that is your starting point, not a generic template. We begin with the leanest option that fits, since both have capable free tiers.
• Pipeline build: stages and qualification gates that match your real deals, so the view reflects the business rather than a tidy diagram.
• Weekly review protocol: the read you run each week, deal by deal, marking what moved and what went quiet, with a named economic buyer on every live deal.
• Velocity baseline and reporting: a four-week baseline off the same install, weekly on the pipeline and monthly into the advisory rhythm, so the numbers come from one source rather than three.
• Context-pack layer: for the manual-everything case, added on top of the install, the one place this box touches the AI side of the work.
• Not-now revisit cadence: a signal-based follow-up rhythm for the deals that are not dead but not now — tagged in the pipeline with a revisit trigger and a legitimate reason to re-engage, plus stay-in-touch templates, so the slow yes gets warmed instead of quietly falling out of your pipeline.

Sign-off is behavioural, not a handover. It is done when you run the weekly review solo and can state pipeline health in 60 seconds without opening the spreadsheet.

built to run on your AI

The pipeline ships with motion.md — your stage definitions, entry conditions and inspection rhythm written as an AI-loadable file. Drop it into your own Claude or equivalent and your AI reads the pipeline the way you do: it knows when a deal can advance and when it is stuck, so the weekly review and your AI hold to the same rules. You leave with a capability, not just a board.

how it works

The mechanism is a weekly rhythm rather than a one-off setup you inherit and then let go stale.

The weekly pipeline review is the spine: every week we look at the same board, deal by deal, and ask what changed. Deal inspection goes a level under that on the deals worth the attention, testing whether each one is qualified or just comfortable. Both run on the McMahon inspection rhythm, the same question asked every week until the answer is honest, which is what turns a pipeline from a list into a forecast you can act on. The review also catches the deals that go quiet without dying: the not-now buyer gets tagged for a signal-based revisit — a legitimate reason to re-engage on a timed trigger, not an anxious chase — so the slow yes is warmed rather than dropped.

routing

Most of the answers here are mechanical, meaning the fix does not depend on first working out why.

• No pipeline, ad hoc pipeline, no tools, legacy tools, everything manual: these route straight to the install and the weekly review. There is no pipeline artefact to diagnose yet, so building one is the no-regret first move whatever the underlying cause turns out to be.
• "No data on what is working" is the exception. It can mean a missing dashboard, which the reporting layer answers directly, or it can mean you do not yet know which lever matters, which is a positioning question wearing a metrics costume. This row opens a conversation before it routes to a dashboard.

where it fits

This is the mechanical spine of the sales system, and the safe first build for a founder with no pipeline or one still living in Excel. Install the tool, build the pipeline, review it weekly, report off it. From there it feeds the reporting layer and the advisory cadence, so the weekly review has somewhere to go each month rather than resetting to zero.

who attends

The founder. Reading your own pipeline every week is the habit that makes this work, so it is worth keeping to yourself rather than handing off. Someone can help assemble the data, but you run the review.

how the engagement runs

Four weekly sessions, about a month, then it is yours to run. The £2,000 is fixed for the work, not billed by the session.

• Session 1: install and build. Your CRM set up (Attio or HubSpot), your live deals imported off the spreadsheet, stages and qualification gates that match how you actually sell.
• Session 2: first review. We run the weekly read together and set a four-week velocity baseline. You leave able to run it solo.
• Session 3: discipline check. One month in, we check the rhythm held: a named economic buyer on every live deal, and any deal stuck four weeks running recorded as a loss, not left open.
• Session 4: handover. Reporting off the board, and the read that matters: you can state pipeline health in 60 seconds without opening the spreadsheet. That is done, not a report delivered.

We run these about a week apart on purpose, so each piece gets tested against your real world before we build the next on top of it. If you already have one of these under control, we do not run that session for the sake of it. Working this way keeps the work sharp and built around where your business actually is, not where a plan assumed you would be.

what you need first

• Your live deals, in whatever they sit in now — the spreadsheet, the inbox — so we can load them into a real pipeline.
• A CRM, or the willingness to set one up: Attio or HubSpot is your choice, and we start with the cheapest option that fits, since the install is built around how you actually sell.
• Your commitment to run the weekly review yourself. Reading your own pipeline is the core habit here, so it is worth doing yourself rather than delegating.

comes before

The advisory layer. Once the pipeline is installed and running to a weekly rhythm, advisory is what keeps it honest month to month — the review, the coaching, the ownership. Build the system first, then decide whether you want ongoing guidance to keep it running.