Thanks for the feedback. In my system as soon as I get word of an accepted estimate I schedule it. Instead of a folder for scheduled we have a wall in the office where we have 5 rows of 7 clips that are hanging on the wall. One clip for each day and each row is a week. We can very quickly see where to schedule the next job and we put the estimate on the wall as soon as it is accepted.

Once the job is completed I either email a copy of the estimate and it goes in my ‘owes money’ folder or if it needs to be mailed I give a copy to our office person who handles it from there.

a ‘to Invoice’ folder probably would work for me, but I do a good job of sending it out as soon as the job is complete. If I get backed up that folder would be useful.

That is a all paper system and I use quickbooks for the invoicing/estimates.

As far as my day to day todos I made getitdoneapp.com . I put all my work and home tasks in there, it is much easier for me to keep track of everything on the internet so I can get to it from home and work.

Thanks,
Mike

I really like your service sales pipeline. I was wondering why you don’t put some form of these:

to Schedule

to Invoice

Thank you,

Donald

1. need to call back – most leads contact us first so their info goes into here until I call them back

depending on if it is a fit for us or not I put it in one of the 2 folders:

1. need estimates – i contacted them and i need to make an estimate
2. old items – i like to keep their contact info even if we are not giving them an estimate

then the rest of my folders

1. estimates – the estimate was sent to them and I’m waiting to hear back to see if they accepted it or not
2. scheduled – if they accept the estimate the job gets scheduled
3. owes money – when the job is done it goes in here until i get paid
4. jobs done – all the completed jobs

seems to work pretty well, i started it this year (after reading GTD) and I haven’t looked back

I will make sure it is not the last. GTD is an important part of how I manage and teach sales–it is a natural fit.

GTD Times thanks for giving me the opportunity to contribute!