Hot, warm, cold: a simple three-lane way to track quotes

Big CRMs often split the sales process into seven or eight stages. For a small team that means empty fields and reports nobody trusts. For most small businesses a simpler method works better: sort quotes into three lanes by temperature.

The three lanes

• Hot: the customer is actively talking, asking for revisions, or a decision date is close.
• Warm: the quote is being considered, with no clear signal yet but the door still open.
• Cold: no reply for a long time, or the customer has gone another way.

Won and lost quotes leave the lanes and are recorded as outcomes, so the screen only shows work that still needs attention.

Why it works

Temperature is something a salesperson already carries in their head. "Which stage is this quote in?" makes people think; "Is this quote hot?" gets an answer in a second. Information that is easy to give stays up to date.

How to start

List your open quotes and give each one a temperature. Then set a rule: follow up hot quotes weekly, warm ones every two weeks and cold ones monthly. Letting a system remind you of this rhythm keeps the follow-up going.