Pipeline Generation Audit
Pipeline Generation Checklist — Find the Gaps Holding Back Your Pipeline
Most teams are running five or six channels and leaving the rest to chance. This checklist covers every activity that drives pipeline across 38 activities and 10+ channels — so you can see exactly what you're doing, what you're missing, and what matters most.
12
Channels
38
Activities
~15 min
To complete
Messaging
Define personas for every buyer type
Who are you actually talking to, and do your reps know the difference?
Nail how you talk about what you do
Can your team describe the product the same way, in plain language, every time?
Lock in your ICP
Title, company size, industry, signals. If your list could be anyone, it's no one.
Test your messaging before scaling outbound
Do you know which messages convert and which ones don't? Test subject lines, openers, and value props against real reply data before scaling your sequences.
Cold Outbound
Cold email sequence running
Active sequences, tested subject lines, plain text vs HTML considered.
Hit meaningful cold call volume with a tested script
Volume matters. Under 500 dials a week and you don't have enough data yet.
Cold LinkedIn outreach
Connection requests, DMs, voice notes. Different channel, same discipline.
Build a coordinated multi-channel sequence
Are your email, phone, and LinkedIn touches coordinated, or are they happening independently? A multi-channel sequence with deliberate timing outperforms any single channel.
Maintain clean, accurate contact data
Bounced emails, wrong titles, outdated companies. If your list isn't clean, your outbound numbers are lying to you.
Personalized video outreach
Loom or similar. One video per prospect. Higher effort, higher reply rate. Pro tip: when someone watches your video on day one, reach out immediately. They're hot.
Warm up target accounts on LinkedIn before reaching out
Comment, react, reply. Warm the name before the ask.
Monthly broadcast email to full ICP list
Not a newsletter. A direct, value-first email to everyone in your ICP. Once a month.
Respond to email replies within minutes
Speed matters more than script. If you're not responding same session, you're losing momentum.
Double tap on day-one LinkedIn video views
When someone watches your video on day one, reach out immediately. They're hot.
LinkedIn Posting
Post every day
Consistency over virality. The algorithm rewards volume. Your audience rewards presence.
Coordinate post responses for early engagement
Get comments in the first 30 minutes. Ask trusted contacts to engage early.
Podcast
Record episodes consistently
You can't build an audience on a backlog. Release schedule matters.
Respond to everyone who interacts with episodes
Comments, reposts, DMs. This is where the relationship starts.
Prospect strangers using the podcast as an opener
People interested in the topic are more likely to be interested in your solution.
Newsletter
Send a weekly newsletter to your LinkedIn connections
Consistent, practical, short. Not a recap. A point of view.
Masterclass
Run a monthly masterclass
Pick a topic, pick an audience, build an outbound motion around it.
Events / In Person
Go to relevant events
Show up where your buyers already are.
Host mini dinners in target cities
Small, curated, no pitch. Just relationships.
Visit cities for in-person meetings
Remote-first doesn't mean in-person-never.
Join industry groups
Be in the rooms where decisions get made.
Website
Confirm the site is actually converting
Is traffic turning into demo requests? If you don't know, check.
Install conversion tracking on every CTA
Do you know which pages convert and which ones don't? If you're not tracking CTA clicks, form fills, and demo bookings by source, you're flying blind.
Add customer proof — logos, case studies, or testimonials
Do you have logos, a case study, or a quote from a real customer on your site? One real proof point does more than any feature list.
Map the flow for every persona
What does each buyer see when they land? What's the next step?
Make the demo easy to find and book
If it takes more than two clicks, you're losing people.
Keep messaging and videos current
Stale content signals a stale company.
SEO / AEO
Write articles targeting buyer search terms
Consistent publishing beats one-time effort every time.
Monitor keyword rankings
Know what's moving and what's not.
Build backlinks through outreach
One good placement beats ten mediocre ones.
Engage on Reddit in relevant communities
Genuine participation, not promotion.
Get your brand cited in AI search results
When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude about your category, do you show up? Getting cited in AI answers is now a distinct activity from traditional SEO.
Dark Research
Find out what prospects see when researching the problem you solve
Do the search yourself. Read what they read.
Find out what prospects see when researching you
Google your own name and company. Then fix what you find.
Monitor competitor reviews on G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot
Read every recent review of your top two or three competitors. The complaints are your positioning. The praise tells you what you're being compared against.
Marketing
Run LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads
Boost your best organic posts with a small budget. Low risk, good signal.
Build a propensity model
Which accounts in your ICP are most likely to buy right now?
Set up retargeting
Probably not a priority yet, but worth understanding the setup.
Referrals
Systematically ask your network for referrals
Build a simple process. Most people will help if you ask directly.
Ask for referrals during the sales process
The best time to ask is when someone has just seen value.
Ask customers for introductions, not just referrals
Don't ask customers if they know anyone. Ask them to introduce you to a specific person at a specific company. Warm intros close at a dramatically higher rate.
Partners
Identify two or three technology or integration partners
Which tools does your ICP already use that complement yours? A co-selling relationship with one of them can generate introductions you'd never get cold.
Get listed in partner and integration marketplaces
If your buyers use platforms with app marketplaces, a listing there is passive pipeline with no ongoing effort.
Run this audit on your own company
Copy the prompt below and paste it into Claude. It will scrape this checklist and output a Google Sheets-ready table you can use to track your pipeline generation efforts.
Go to https://www.gettopiq.ai/pipeline-generation-checklist and scrape the full checklist from the page. Once you have it, output a table with these columns: | Category | Activity | Description | Impact | Status | - Category: the section header (e.g. Messaging, Cold Outbound, etc.) - Activity: the name of the checklist item - Description: the short description under the activity name - Impact: High / Medium / Low (from the badge on each item) - Status: leave this blank — it's for me to fill in Format the output as tab-separated values (TSV) inside a code block, with one row per activity. This pastes directly into Google Sheets with a normal Cmd+V — no Paste Special needed.
Paste into Claude at claude.ai — no edits needed, it's ready to go.