Working with Prospects

Read time 7 min Level Beginner Prerequisites You have read Sales Pipeline; your tenant has Business Prospecting enabled

In a nutshell: A prospect is a card on the Sales Pipeline board backed by a real CRM client -- the client row exists the instant you add the card. Set the prospect's heat (Hot / Warm / Cold / Ice Cold), log activities (Call / Email / Meeting / Note) with an optional Reception and callback, and move the card through the six pipeline stages as the deal progresses. Quote Sent hands the deal to Account Management; Won lights up automatically when the agreement is signed.

What you will learn

What a prospect is in Buzzscribed, and how the prospect record connects to your CRM.
The two ways to add a prospect.
How heat works and how to log activities against a prospect.
What each of the six pipeline stages means for a prospect.

The mental model: a prospect is a client with a deal card

A prospect is a card on the Sales Pipeline board (BUSINESS menu > Sales Pipeline). Behind that card is a row in your Clients table -- created or reused the moment you add the card. So a prospect already is a CRM client; the pipeline card tracks the deal you are working with that client.

This article is a companion to Sales Pipeline -- read that one for the tabs, the board and the hand-off flow. Here we zoom in on the prospect record: how it is created, how you work it day to day, and what each stage means for the deal.

Acme PR Corp brought Northwind Outdoor Co onto the pipeline nine months before the retainer signed. The Northwind card sat in Contact, then Qualified, then Proposal, then Quote Sent across that arc, before flipping to Won the day the agreement was countersigned.

[Screenshot placeholder -- a prospect card on the kanban board with its heat colour, plus the Log Activity modal open showing Call / Email / Meeting / Note and the Reception dropdown.]

A prospect card and the Log Activity modal: choose the activity type, record how the prospect responded, schedule the next callback.

Two ways onto the board

Both routes create the CRM client row for you:

Quick-add by name. Type a company name into the "+ Add prospect (company name)..." box at the foot of any of the first four columns (Contact, Qualified, Proposal, Quote Sent) and press Enter. Buzzscribed checks for an existing client with that name; finding one reuses it, otherwise it creates a fresh Clients row and the pipeline card in the column you chose.
Add Prospect modal. The Add Prospect button in the page header lets you search existing clients and pick one (or create a new client with a contact), set a lead source, and choose the starting stage. Useful when you have richer context to capture up front.

Either way, the prospect lands as a real client you can find in your CRM -- and a card you can drag around the board as the deal moves.

Qualification discipline: when to move, when to walk away

Heat is what you record about a prospect. Qualification is what you do about it. Agencies that grow profitable retainer books rather than spinning their wheels on bad-fit prospects share a qualification discipline. The B2B sales BANT framework (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is a useful starting point, but agency new-business adds three qualifiers BANT misses -- scope-fit, procurement risk, and conflict-check. Run all seven before you let a prospect past Proposal:

Budget: Does the prospect have the budget for the agency's typical engagement? A prospect comfortable with a £5K monthly retainer is not the same prospect as one ready for £15K. Ask early. "What range have you scoped for this work?" is a fair question by the second meeting. Move them to Qualified when budget is confirmed within your range.
Authority: Are you speaking to a decision-maker, or to a researcher who will report to one? Know the decision-maker by name and ideally meet them before Proposal stage. A prospect at Proposal who has yet to introduce you to the decision-maker is a flag.
Need: Is there a real problem to solve, or is the prospect collecting agency presentations for an annual review? Listen for the specific outcomes they want; vague briefs are usually fishing expeditions. A clear need maps to a Story or a retainer with measurable goals.
Timeline: When does the work need to start, and what is driving the date? "Sometime in the next few months" is not a timeline; "we need to be in market by Q3 to support the product launch" is. The timeline tells you whether to push for Proposal or hold the relationship for later.
Scope-fit: Does the work fit the agency's strengths? An agency built on B2B trade press will struggle to win a consumer-lifestyle brief and will deliver poorly if it does. "Are we their tenth agency this quarter?" tells you whether the prospect knows what they need. A prospect chasing every agency on a generic RFP rarely converts to a satisfied client.
Procurement risk: How does the prospect's organisation actually sign agencies? Procurement-led tenders, framework panels, and reverse auctions are red flags for boutique agencies -- the buying process strips margin and slows decisions. Ask "who has signing authority and what's their process?" by Qualified stage.
Conflict-check: Does this prospect compete with any existing client? Direct competitors mean a client conversation before you proceed -- the existing relationship has first call on the agency. Run the conflict-check against the Clients & Brands list before moving the card to Proposal; flag any overlap in the Description field.

Use the Log Activity Reception field to record what each conversation reveals. A prospect logged Hot on Reception after a Discovery call where Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline all checked is ready to move to Qualified. A prospect logged Cold after a discovery call where two of the four are missing is honestly Cold, even if the conversation was friendly.

Knowing when to walk away is part of the discipline. A prospect that sits in Contact or Qualified for 90 days without progress is rarely going to convert; the Stale flag (the 21-day no-contact marker) plus the Lost Deal Insights aggregation on Sales Pipeline DASHBOARD will surface patterns. Walking away on a bad-fit prospect frees the team for the next good one.

Heat: the rating you set by hand

Every prospect carries a heat value -- Hot, Warm, Cold or Ice Cold. Heat colours the card, so the board reads at a glance -- hot prospects pop, cold ones recede. Set heat from the card's detail panel, from the filter bar's bulk actions, or as the Reception value when you log an activity. Heat is a colour, not an age timer -- the 21-day Stale flag (covered in the Sales Pipeline article) is the platform's age signal.

Logging an activity

Open the Log Activity modal from a card. The fields are deliberately tight, so logging is quick:

Activity Type: Call, Email, Meeting or Note. Pick what happened.
Reception -- how did they respond?: An optional dropdown on the Hot / Warm / Cold / Ice Cold scale. Setting Reception nudges your read on the deal and updates the card's heat where appropriate.
Subject and Notes: A short summary line plus a free-text notes field for detail.
Schedule Callback?: An optional date and time. Scheduled callbacks surface on the PITCH QUEUE tab and in the Callbacks Due focus list, so nothing slips.

Try this: Add a prospect with the quick-add box, open its card, and log a Call activity. Set Reception to Warm and schedule a callback for tomorrow. Switch to the PITCH QUEUE tab -- your callback appears under Tomorrow. Two motions, full tracking.

What the six stages mean

A prospect moves through six fixed stages: Contact (first outreach) → Qualified (confirmed need and budget) → Proposal (services and scope shared) → Quote Sent (pricing out, hand-off trigger) → Won → Lost.

Drag the card to Quote Sent and the Send to Account Manager modal opens. On submit, a provisional agreement is created in Account Management's Forward Planning lane and the card stays in Quote Sent. Once the agreement is signed, Buzzscribed moves the card to Won automatically.

Lost closes a deal that did not work out -- if a provisional agreement was already created, dragging to Lost cancels it. When a lost prospect comes back to life later, work the card again from the right stage.

Quick reference

Prospects live on the Sales Pipeline board (BUSINESS > Sales Pipeline).
Adding a card creates or reuses a Clients row -- the prospect is a CRM client from the start.
Create via the quick-add box (company name + Enter) or the Add Prospect modal.
Heat = Hot / Warm / Cold / Ice Cold, set by hand or via the Reception field on logged activities.
Log Activity: Call / Email / Meeting / Note, with an optional Reception and an optional callback.
Stages: Contact → Qualified → Proposal → Quote Sent → Won → Lost. Quote Sent triggers the Account Management hand-off.
Won updates automatically once the agreement is signed in Account Management; Lost can cancel a provisional agreement.

Key takeaways

A prospect is a Sales Pipeline card backed by a real CRM client -- one record, two views.
Heat is set manually; Reception captures how each touchpoint landed; stage transitions on either end of the funnel are automatic (Quote Sent hand-off, Won on signature).
Quote Sent hands the deal to Account Management. A signed agreement lights up Won automatically.