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Client Status Pipeline

The status pipeline is the backbone of your business development workflow. It lets you categorize every company in your client list by where they stand in your sales process, from initial prospect to converted client. Every status change is tracked with timestamps and context, creating a complete history of your business development journey with each company.

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Pipeline Stages

Recruitier uses five defined pipeline stages that reflect the natural progression of a recruitment business development relationship:

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Prospect

Color: Gray The starting stage for every company you track. A Prospect is a company you have identified as a potential client but have not contacted yet. This is where companies land when you click “Track Company” from the Client Search or a company detail page. Typical activities at this stage:

• Reviewing the company’s job postings and hiring trends
• Identifying the right decision makers to contact
• Preparing a personalized outreach message based on their specific hiring needs
• Researching the company’s current recruitment setup (do they use agencies? which ones?)

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Contacted

Color: Blue The company moves to Contacted when you have sent your first outreach message. This stage indicates that you have made initial contact but have not yet received a meaningful response or scheduled a meeting. Typical activities at this stage:

• Following up on initial outreach (typically 2-3 follow-ups spaced a few days apart)
• Trying alternative contacts if the first person did not respond
• Monitoring the company’s hiring activity for conversation hooks and timely follow-ups
• Sending follow-up messages with relevant market insights or candidate highlights

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Meeting

Color: Purple The Meeting stage indicates that you have progressed beyond initial outreach to a real conversation. This could be a phone call, video meeting, or in-person meeting where you discuss the company’s recruitment needs and your services. Typical activities at this stage:

• Conducting discovery calls to understand hiring needs, timelines, and budgets
• Presenting your agency’s capabilities, track record, and differentiators
• Discussing terms, fees, and working arrangements
• Sharing relevant candidate profiles (with candidate consent) to demonstrate your network quality

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Won

Color: Green Won means the deal is closed. The company has agreed to work with you, whether through a formal agreement, a verbal commitment, or an active placement assignment. This is the target outcome for every company in your pipeline. Typical activities at this stage:

• Fulfilling placement assignments and delivering quality candidates
• Building the relationship for repeat business and expanding to additional departments
• Getting referrals to other companies
• Maintaining regular check-ins to stay top-of-mind for future needs

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Lost

Color: Red Lost indicates that the opportunity did not convert. The company either explicitly declined your services, chose a competitor, or the opportunity is no longer viable. When marking a company as Lost, you are required to provide a reason, which helps you analyze patterns and improve your approach over time. Typical reasons for lost deals:

• Company has an existing recruitment partner they are happy with
• Internal recruitment team handles all hiring
• Budget constraints or hiring freeze
• No response after multiple follow-ups
• Company decided not to use external recruitment
• Terms or fees not acceptable

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Changing a Client’s Status

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Valid Status Transitions

Not every status change makes sense. Recruitier enforces the following transition rules to maintain pipeline integrity:

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Why Some Transitions Are Restricted

• Won can only go to Lost — A Won client that stops working with you is a lost client, not a prospect. This preserves the historical record that you once had this client and captures the loss reason for analysis.
• Meeting cannot go back to Prospect — Once you have had a meeting, you have established contact. Going back to Prospect would lose that context and create an inaccurate timeline. If the meeting did not go well, move to Lost.
• Lost can only go to Prospect — If a lost deal reopens, it makes sense to restart from the beginning of the cycle with fresh outreach. This creates a clear delineation between the old and new sales attempts.

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How Status Changes Are Tracked

Every status change creates an activity record in the ClientCompanyActivity table that includes:

• Previous status — What the company was before the change
• New status — What you changed it to
• Timestamp — When the change was made (stored in client_status_changed_at on the Company record)
• User — Who made the change (important for agency teams to know who owns the relationship)
• Description — Any notes you added with the change
• Loss reason — Required and recorded when status changes to Lost (stored in extra_data)

These records appear in the company’s Activity Timeline and are visible to all agency members. They provide a complete, auditable history of the relationship’s progression.

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Using Statuses to Prioritize Follow-ups

Your pipeline statuses directly inform your daily workflow:

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Morning Routine

1. Check Contacted companies — These need follow-up. How long has it been since your last outreach? Use the client_status_changed_at date to identify companies that have been at Contacted for too long without progress.
2. Review Meeting companies — Any upcoming meetings? Any meetings you need to prepare for? Check notes from colleagues.
3. Scan Prospects — Are there companies ready for initial outreach today? Which Prospects have you researched and prepared for?

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Weekly Review

1. Look at the overall pipeline distribution. A healthy pipeline has companies at every stage.
2. Check for companies that have been in Contacted for too long (more than 2-3 weeks without progress). Either follow up again or move to Lost.
3. Review recently Lost companies — can any be revisited? Have their circumstances changed?
4. Add new Prospects from Client Discovery to keep the pipeline full.
5. Celebrate Wins and analyze what worked.

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Best Practices for Pipeline Management

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Keep Statuses Current

Update statuses in real-time. Do not batch-update at the end of the week. If you just had a meeting, change the status immediately while the context is fresh and add a note about what was discussed.

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Be Honest About Lost Deals

Marking a company as Lost is not a failure — it is good pipeline hygiene. A pipeline full of companies stuck at “Contacted” for months is less useful than one that accurately reflects reality. If a company is not going to convert, mark it as Lost, record the reason, and move on to more promising opportunities.

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Use Descriptions

Add context when changing statuses. “Moved to Meeting - call scheduled for Thursday 2pm with Jan (HR Director), will discuss their DevOps hiring needs” is far more useful than a bare status change, especially for colleagues who might follow up.

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Review Loss Reasons

Periodically review why deals are being lost. If many companies say “already have a recruitment partner”, you might need to target companies that are newer or growing faster. If many say “no budget”, you might be targeting the wrong company size. Loss reason data is your best source of strategic intelligence.

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Maintain Pipeline Volume

A common mistake is to get excited about a few promising leads and stop prospecting. Keep adding new Prospects even when your pipeline looks full. Conversion rates in recruitment BD are typically 10-20%, so you need a steady flow of new prospects to maintain a healthy number of Won clients. A pipeline that is not being fed will dry up.

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Advanced

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How the Pipeline Works Under the Hood

The pipeline is implemented through the client_status field on the Company entity. This field accepts one of the defined status values: prospect, contacted, meeting, won, or lost. The client_status_changed_at timestamp field is updated on every transition, enabling analysis of how long companies spend at each stage. Status transitions are validated at the service layer. The system checks the current status and ensures the requested new status is in the allowed transition map. Invalid transitions are rejected with a validation error.

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Activity Record Structure

Each status change creates a ClientCompanyActivity record with:

• activity_type: "status_change"
• description: User-provided context for the change
• old_status: The previous status value
• new_status: The new status value
• extra_data: JSONB field containing additional information like loss reasons

For automatic status changes (e.g., Prospect to Contacted triggered by outreach), the description indicates the change was automatic, providing transparency about system-initiated actions.

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Connection to Other Features

• Kanban View: The Kanban board visualizes the pipeline by reading Company records and grouping them by client_status. Drag-and-drop actions trigger the same status change logic as the detail page.
• Activity Timeline: Status changes are one of several activity types that appear in the timeline. They are interleaved chronologically with notes, outreach, and other activities.
• Search Results: The “saved” indicator in Client Search checks for the existence of a Company record linked to each GlobalCompany. This is independent of the pipeline status.
• Decision Makers: Discovery results are stored on the GlobalCompany, not the Company record. This means decision maker data is shared across all users who track the same company, but pipeline status is per-user/agency.

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Power User Tips

• Use client_status_changed_at for stale pipeline detection: Companies that have been at the same status for more than 2-3 weeks may need attention. Either advance them or move them to Lost.
• Pipeline velocity matters: Track not just how many companies are at each stage, but how quickly they move through. If companies routinely spend 6 weeks at Contacted before reaching Meeting, your outreach approach may need revision.
• Lost is not forever: The Lost to Prospect transition is designed for recycling. Set calendar reminders to revisit Lost companies after 3-6 months. Their circumstances may have changed.
• Won clients need attention too: Do not neglect Won clients. Regular check-ins, new job notifications, and proactive outreach about new roles keep the relationship active and generate repeat business.
• Skip stages when appropriate: The transition rules allow moving directly from Prospect to Meeting (or even Won) if the situation warrants it. If a referral from an existing client leads directly to a meeting, you do not need to pass through Contacted first.

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Business Logic Rules

• The initial status when tracking a company is always prospect.
• Status transition validation enforces the allowed transition map.
• Moving to Lost requires a loss reason (stored in extra_data JSONB).
• The client_status_changed_at timestamp is updated on every transition.
• Every status change creates an immutable ClientCompanyActivity record.
• Auto-status changes (e.g., on first outreach) are logged with a description indicating they were automatic.
• The transition from Lost back to Prospect resets the sales cycle while preserving all historical activity records.

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Related

• Client Management Overview — Pipeline management fundamentals
• Activity Timeline — Tracking all interactions
• Kanban Pipeline View — Visual pipeline management
• Company Detail Page — Changing status from the detail page