The Minimal Client Pipeline Setup in ClickUp for 3–10 Person Creative Studios

Most small creative studios don’t have a sales problem.
They have a pipeline problem.

Leads live in:

• Your inbox

• Instagram / LinkedIn DMs

• Random spreadsheets

• Your brain

Then you wonder why:

• You forget to follow up

• Proposals get “ghosted”

• You’re never sure what’s actually coming next month

You don’t need a huge CRM to fix this.
You just need a minimal, clear pipeline in ClickUp that works for a 3–10 person studio.

This guide shows you exactly how to set that up.

Why Creative Studios Overcomplicate Their Pipeline

When studios try to “get serious” about sales, they usually do one of two things:

1. Sign up for a full CRM they never actually use

2. Build a ClickUp setup with 14 stages and no discipline

Both are overkill.

Your studio probably doesn’t need:

• Lead scoring formulas

• 10 automation tools

• 3 different “qualification frameworks”

You need:

• A place where every lead lives

• A handful of clear stages

• A simple daily habit to keep it updated

ClickUp can do this perfectly without becoming your full-time job.

The 5 Core Stages You Actually Need

Most small studios can run their whole pipeline on just five stages:

1. New lead
   Someone who raised their hand: filled a form, DM, email, intro, etc.

2. Qualified / Discovery booked
   You’ve confirmed basics: budget range, type of project, rough fit. A call is booked or at least in progress.

3. Proposal sent
   You’ve invested time into a proposal, scope, or offer.

4. Won
   They said yes. Contract / start date is agreed, or they’re clearly moving ahead.

5. Lost / Not now
   They explicitly said no, ghosted after a while, or postponed.

Everything else is noise.

If you’re honest, every lead you currently have can fit into one of those five buckets.

Setting Up These Stages in ClickUp

You can do this in a few ways. Keep it simple the first time.

Step 1: Create a dedicated “Pipeline” area

In ClickUp:

• Space: Sales or Clients

• Folder: Pipeline

• List: Client Pipeline

Your pipeline will live in this one List.

Each task = one opportunity / potential client, not one to-do.

Step 2: Choose how to represent stages

You have two good options:

Option A: Use Statuses as stages

Statuses:

• New lead

• Qualified

• Proposal sent

• Won

• Lost

Pros:

• Clean board view

• Easy to drag & drop between stages

Cons:

• If you need more complex statuses later (like sub-workflow), it gets tight.

Option B: Use a Custom Field called Stage

Statuses:

• Open

• Closed

Custom field (Dropdown):

• New lead

• Qualified

• Proposal sent

• Won

• Lost

Pros:

• More flexible long term

• Status can be used for “is this active or archived?” instead of stage

Cons:

• Slightly more setup, but nothing crazy.

For a 3–10 person studio, both work.
If you know you’ll grow this into something more complex, use the custom field.

Step 3: Add useful custom fields

At minimum, add:

• Source (Referral / Website / Social / Outbound)

• Budget range (Under 2k / 2–5k / 5–10k / 10k+)

• Project type (Branding / Web / Ongoing design / Other)

• Next action date (when you’ll follow up next)

These fields help you:

• See what channels actually bring good leads

• Filter leads by budget & type

• Never “forget” a follow-up

Step 4: Set up your views

Two key views:

1. Board view by Stage

   • Shows each stage as a column

   • You drag tasks/cards from left to right as they move

2. List view sorted by Next action date

   • Shows what you should touch today / this week

You can add a simple dashboard later to see:

• Number of leads per stage

• Won deals this month

• Lost reasons (if you track them)

How to Use This Pipeline as a Small Studio

Tools don’t fix anything by themselves. The habit does.

Here’s a low-friction way to run this pipeline:

Daily: 10–15 minutes

Once a day (morning is best):

• Open your List view, sorted by Next action date

• For each lead that’s due:

  • Send the follow-up

  • Update the stage if something moved

  • Add a new Next action date

If you don’t know what the next action is, the answer is usually:

• “Follow up in X days”

• “Schedule a call”

• “Wait for their decision until [date], then move to Lost”

Weekly: 20–30 minutes

Once a week, check:

• Any leads stuck too long in “Proposal sent”?

• Any “Qualified” leads you haven’t moved forward or closed?

• Are there patterns in who says yes/no?

You’re not trying to become a full-time salesperson.
You just want a simple system that means you never forget someone who already expressed interest.

Handing Off from “Won” to Onboarding

The moment a deal hits Won, you’re in dangerous territory.
This is where many studios drop the ball.

In ClickUp, when you move a task to Won, you can:

• Use an Automation (or Make) to:

  • Create a client onboarding task / project

  • Apply your onboarding template

  • Assign a PM

At minimum, add a checklist inside the Won deal:

• Contract sent

• Contract signed

• Deposit paid

• Onboarding task created

• Kickoff call scheduled

Once those are done, you can archive or move the lead to a “Clients” list.

The key is:

The pipeline shows sales reality, not onboarding details.

Sales ends at “Won.”
Delivery starts from there.

Connecting Make for Simple Automation

You said you don’t want generic AI tools talked about, so I’ll stick to Make and ClickUp.

Here are two simple Make scenarios that massively reduce admin:

Automation 1: Form → Lead in ClickUp

Goal: every new inquiry automatically becomes a pipeline card.

Flow:

1. Client fills out a Contact / Project inquiry form

2. Trigger in Make: new submission from Typeform / Tally / Framer form

3. Actions:

   • Create a task in Client Pipeline

   • Fill fields:

     • Name

     • Email

     • Company

     • Project type

     • Source (e.g. “Website form”)

   • Set stage to New lead

   • Optionally: send a simple confirmation email

Now no lead “stays in your inbox” and gets forgotten.

Automation 2: Proposal events → Stage updates

If your proposal tool supports webhooks or integrations:

1. When a proposal is sent, set Stage to Proposal sent

2. When a proposal is accepted, set Stage to Won and:

   • Create an onboarding task

   • Notify your internal Slack channel

   • Add the client to a ClickUp “Active Clients” list

Even if you don’t fully automate this yet, you’ve got a clean place to manually update things.

Common Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

A few traps I’ve seen small studios fall into:

1. Too many stages

If you have:

• New

• Contacted

• Responded

• Qualified

• Discovery

• Proposal in progress

• Proposal sent

• Negotiation

• Decision pending

• Won

…no one will use it consistently.

Cut it down. If you can’t remember the stages when your head is full, it’s too complex.

2. Mixing tasks and opportunities

A pipeline is not a to-do list.

• Task: “Send proposal to X”

• Opportunity: “Potential branding project with X”

Keep those separate:

• Opportunities live in your Client Pipeline List

• Tasks live in your regular task Lists (or as subtasks on the opportunity)

3. No “Next action date”

If you don’t decide when you’ll touch a lead again, you won’t.
That’s why the Next action date field matters so much.

4. Never closing leads

Not every “quiet” lead is “still active.”

Be honest:

• If it’s been weeks with no response after multiple follow-ups: move to Lost / Not now.

• You can always revive them with a future campaign or check-in.

A clean pipeline is better than a big, fake one.

When to Graduate to a Full CRM (and When Not To)

This minimal ClickUp pipeline can take you surprisingly far.

You might not need a proper CRM until:

• You have multiple salespeople

• You’re dealing with large, complex deals

• You need advanced reporting & multi-touch attribution

• You’re consistently handling dozens of new leads per week

If you’re a 3–10 person creative studio with:

• A few new leads per week

• A chunky average project size

• One main “closer” (often the founder)

…this ClickUp pipeline is more than enough.

And if you outgrow it later, the habits you build here (stages, next actions, follow-up discipline) will transfer into any tool you adopt.

Next step for you right now:

• Open ClickUp

• Create a Client Pipeline List

• Add the five stages and the custom fields

• Move every current lead into it today, even roughly

Once that’s done, you don’t just have “a blog post.”
You have the exact system you can refer to when you tell future clients:

“We run a proper pipeline in ClickUp, not chaos in the inbox.”