Proposal Tracker

What is a proposal tracker?

A proposal tracker is a pipeline that shows every outgoing proposal — the client it was sent to, the deal value, the current decision stage, the follow-up date, and whether it's moving forward or going cold — in one view. It replaces the combination of "sent items" folder searches, CRM tags you added weeks ago, and the list in the account manager's head of which proposals haven't heard back from.

Melororium's Proposal Tracker template provides a Kanban pipeline: Draft → Sent → Follow-up → Negotiation → Won / Lost. Each card has the client name, deal value, sent date, expected decision date, and next action. The pipeline dashboard shows total open pipeline value, average deal size, close rate, and days-in-stage — the metrics that tell you whether your proposal process is healthy.

Why proposal follow-up is where most deals are lost

Research on B2B sales consistently shows that 80% of sales require 5 or more follow-ups. Most salespeople give up after 2. For agencies where the account lead is also managing client delivery, follow-up often loses to urgency: a client escalation on Tuesday means the proposal follow-up scheduled for Tuesday gets pushed, then forgotten.

The other failure: proposals go cold without anyone noticing. A proposal sent two weeks ago with no response should trigger a follow-up. But if the proposal isn't in a tracking system that flags it, it might sit in "sent" indefinitely while the prospect has already moved on to a competitor who followed up on Day 5.

How agencies track proposals without losing opportunities

Follow-up tasks with automatic due dates

When a proposal card moves to Sent, a follow-up task is created with a due date of Day 5 (or whatever your standard follow-up window is). When the follow-up task comes due, it appears in the account manager's task queue. The proposal doesn't get forgotten — it gets followed up on schedule.

Days-in-stage visibility for cold proposals

The pipeline shows how many days each proposal has been in its current stage. A proposal that has been in "Sent" for 14 days without a follow-up task completion is a cold lead in progress. This visibility is what separates a managed pipeline from a list of sent emails.

Close rate by source and deal size

After 3–6 months of data, filter the pipeline by lead source to see which channels produce the best close rates. Filter by deal size to see if your win rate is higher on smaller or larger projects. These patterns are invisible in a spreadsheet but surface automatically when the pipeline is a managed system.

Won → project creation in one step

When a proposal is moved to Won, create the client project from the proposal card. Client name, deal value, and contact carry over. The project board and invoice history link to the same CRM card that tracked the proposal. The transition from proposal to project takes 30 seconds.

Proposal tracker vs. Pipedrive

Pipedrive starts at $14/user/month — $1,680/year for 10 users. It's a dedicated sales CRM with sophisticated pipeline analytics and email integration. For agencies that send 5–30 proposals per month, Pipedrive's feature depth is often more than needed.

Melororium's CRM module handles proposal pipeline tracking, follow-up task management, and close rate analysis for teams that don't need a full sales CRM. Agency plan for 10 users is $59/mo. Pipeline tracking included alongside project management, time tracking, and invoicing.