Sales Process Template for Small Business
Four documents and three sheets that rank follow-ups by response time and value, from an enquiry register measuring an 80 percent close rate on same-day replies.
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Enquiry Register, one quarter
Thistledown Renovations. Sixteen enquiries grouped by how long the first real reply took.
| Response bucket | Enquiries | Won | Win rate | Value won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Same day (0-1 days) | 5 | 4 | 80.0% | $101,000 |
| 2 to 4 days | 6 | 3 | 50.0% | $57,500 |
| 5+ days or never | 5 | 1 | 20.0% | $14,500 |
The slow bucket includes a $54,000 whole-home addition and an $11,000 deck refresh, the same spread as the fast one, so the gap is response time doing the work, not deal size.
Conversion by Source
| Source | Enquiries | Won | Win rate | Value won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referral | 5 | 4 | 80.0% | $100,000 |
| Website | 6 | 2 | 33.3% | $43,000 |
| Google Business Profile | 5 | 2 | 40.0% | $30,000 |
| Firm total | 16 | 8 | 50.0% | $173,000 |
Website leads carry the lowest win rate and both open enquiries in the register, together worth $58,000, are website leads with zero follow-up since the discovery call.
Follow-up Tracker, open enquiries
| Project | Source | Value | Days since contact | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen remodel | Website | $28,000 | 28 | Stale, no follow-up scheduled |
| Kitchen remodel | Website | $30,000 | 12 | Stale, no follow-up scheduled |
| Bathroom remodel | Referral | $16,000 | 2 | On track, sequence C sent |
| Deck addition | Google Business Profile | $21,000 | 1 | On track, sequence B due |
The tracker exists because the register alone cannot show a promised call-back slipping. Both stale rows are exactly the failure the automated sequence is built to catch.
Every sales process template built for a small business assumes the business has a salesperson. It has a stage list, a pipeline board, and advice about qualifying calls, and none of it addresses what happens when the person who would run that pipeline is also the one framing walls on the job already underway. The enquiry does not wait for a slow week, and the follow-up that never happened was never forgotten. It was simply never someone's job to notice.
Thistledown Renovations, invented for this pack, logged sixteen enquiries in one quarter worth $371,000. Same-day replies closed at 80 percent; replies taking five days or more, or never sent again, closed at 20 percent. The slow bucket held a $54,000 addition and an $11,000 refresh, the same range as the fast bucket, so response time is doing the work, not deal size. A Harvard Business Review audit found the same pattern at scale: the average first response to a web lead took 42 hours, and 23 percent of companies never responded at all.
The Follow-up Tracker is the piece a calendar reminder cannot replace, because it flags a promise rather than a date: two open website enquiries worth $58,000 combined had gone 28 and 12 days with no contact since the discovery call. Pair this with the marketing basics pack for where those enquiries should be coming from, and the website and listing content pack for whether the site itself is costing you the fast reply. The pricing review pack picks up once a proposal is out and the question turns to what to quote.
What's in the pack
Process Definition
The four stages from first response through follow-up, sized for one owner rather than a sales team, with the same-day reply rule stated as the one non-negotiable step.
Call Guide
What the fifteen-minute discovery call needs to establish, ending in a stated next step and a date rather than a vague promise to be in touch.
Follow-up Sequences
Three sequences keyed to enquiry status, so a quoted job, a stalled lead and a lost bid each get a different, deliberate cadence instead of one generic reminder.
Proposal Format
A consistent structure for what gets quoted, so a proposal takes minutes to assemble instead of being rebuilt from scratch for every job.
Enquiry Register sheet
Every enquiry logged with source, response time and outcome, the sheet the other two sheets in the pack are both built from.
Conversion by Source sheet
Win rate and value won grouped by where the enquiry came from, showing which channel's leads are actually worth chasing hardest.
Follow-up Tracker sheet
Every open enquiry with days since last contact and the next scheduled touch, so a slipped promise shows up before the lead goes cold.
How it works
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Take the blank Word and CSV files with no account, or install the pack in River and hand it your own enquiry history to compute the real numbers.
- 2
Log response time on every enquiry
Same day, next day, or a specific day count, recorded the moment the first real reply goes out, not estimated afterward from memory.
- 3
Rank the follow-up list by value and days since contact
Not by whichever enquiry you remember. The tracker surfaces the stale, high-value one before it becomes a lost bid nobody flagged in time.
- 4
Review win rate by response bucket every month
If same-day replies keep closing at multiples of the slow bucket, that is the number that justifies protecting fifteen minutes a day for it.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Four documents and three sheets download as Word and CSV files with no signup and no credit card. Edit with AI is the optional path where the agent builds the register from your own enquiries. The rest of the library is at the template index.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the Process Definition, Call Guide, Follow-up Sequences and Proposal Format, and CSV (.csv) for the Enquiry Register, Conversion by Source and Follow-up Tracker. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets.
I do not have a CRM. Does this still work?
That is what it is built for. The Enquiry Register is a spreadsheet, not a database, and the Follow-up Tracker's whole job is catching the promised call-back a CRM's pipeline view would otherwise assume someone is watching.
How many enquiries do I need before the response-time pattern means anything?
A full quarter is usually enough to see a real gap between buckets, the way Thistledown's sixteen enquiries did. Fewer than that still tells you whether follow-up is happening at all, which is often the more urgent finding.
What counts as a same-day response if the enquiry comes in at night?
The Process Definition sets this explicitly: an enquiry after 6pm counts as same day if the reply goes out first thing the next morning. The rule exists so the standard stays realistic for one owner rather than requiring a round-the-clock reply.
Does Edit with AI chase the follow-ups for me automatically?
It builds the tracker and flags what is overdue and by how much; sending the actual message is still a step you take, worded from the Follow-up Sequences document rather than from scratch each time.
Find out what slow follow-up is actually costing you
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and have it build your follow-up tracker from your own enquiry history.
Edit with AI