Getting customers now

My sales pipeline is empty. What do I do this week?

Spend this week filling the top of the pipeline: list 100 named buyers, send each a short email, follow up on a schedule, and reopen every deal you lost in the past year. An empty pipeline means too few conversations started, not a broken product. Fix the number of conversations first and everything downstream gets easier to read.

Updated October 2026

Diagnose it in ten minutes

An empty pipeline has three common causes, and each one needs a different fix. Count how many new people you contacted in the last 30 days. If it was fewer than 30, you have a volume problem. If it was plenty but nobody answered, you have a message or a targeting problem. If people answered and nothing closed, you have a follow-up or quoting problem.

Most small companies with an empty pipeline are in the first group. They were busy serving customers, stopped prospecting for a few weeks, and the pipeline drained. That is normal and fixable in a week.

The fictional example here is Tern Bookkeeping, a three-person firm. Owner Priyanka Voss has two open quotes and nothing else. She has five working days.

The week, day by day

Each day has one output you can check by evening.

  • Monday, reopen: list every lead from the last 12 months who did not become a customer. Pick the 20 best. Send each one a two-line message asking if the need is still there.
  • Tuesday, name the buyer: write one sentence that says who your customer is, specific enough that a stranger could find ten examples in ten minutes.
  • Wednesday, list: build 100 named people who match. A name, a role, a business and an email address each. This is the slow step by hand, about three minutes a person.
  • Thursday, send: write one short email and send the first 25 from your own inbox. Keep it to six sentences and one question.
  • Friday, follow up and count: answer every reply within the hour, send the first follow-ups, and write down how many conversations you have open. That count is your new pipeline number.

Write the email so it can get a yes

The email should be short enough to read on a phone. Say who you are, say why you are writing to this person in particular, ask one question, and make the next step small. Priyanka's first line: "I help dental and chiropractic offices in Columbus close their books by the 10th. Who handles yours now?"

Ask a question that is easy to answer. "Do you have 15 minutes to talk about your goals" is hard to answer. "Who handles your bookkeeping now?" takes five words. A reply to a small question is the start of a conversation, and a conversation is the start of a pipeline.

Plan on four touches over about two weeks, and stop for anyone who replies. Most answers come after the first email, not to it.

Keep the pipeline from emptying again

The pipeline emptied because prospecting depended on you having a free hour. Make it a standing block: 30 minutes a day, same time, before email and phone. Or hand the repetitive parts to software so it keeps running when you are busy.

Track three numbers once a week: new people contacted, replies, and meetings booked. If the first number is steady, the other two tell you whether the message works. If the first number drops, you have found the leak.

How Rocketship fills it

Rocketship is built for exactly this week. You describe your buyer, it finds named people with email addresses, sends from your own Gmail, follows up, answers replies and books the meeting on your calendar. Everything lands in one pipeline view, so Friday's count is a screen, not a spreadsheet. Importing your own list is free, and Launch includes 50 leads a month, Frontier 200.

A new inbox ramps up gradually to 60 cold emails a day, so volume builds over the first weeks.

You can try it free for 7 days on Launch or Frontier, card required. See plans and pricing, or read what Rocketship is first.

Related questions

How many leads should be in a healthy pipeline?
There is no universal number. Divide your target new customers by your own close rate, then divide by the share that reach a meeting. Start from your own history. If you have none yet, run 100 contacts through four touches and count what happens.
Should I buy a lead list?
A bought list can be a fast start, but check that it names real people in your target group and has working addresses. A smaller, well-chosen list of 100 beats a large vague one. Always honor opt-outs.
How fast can an empty pipeline fill?
Reopened leads and warm contacts can answer within days. Cold outreach usually shows its first meetings in the second week, since follow-ups run over about two weeks.
Do I need a CRM to fix this?
You need somewhere to see who you contacted and what happened. A spreadsheet works for a week. After that, a pipeline view that updates itself saves the time you would spend maintaining it.

Rocketship finds your buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own.

See plans and pricing