Milestones

Milestones are the sales stages of a lead: the checkpoints between “someone mentioned a potential client” and a funded retainer. Every new lead gets the standard set automatically; you check each stage off as it happens. Marking stages is what powers the pipeline, funnel, and flow charts in Sales reporting.

The Stages, in Order

1. Awaiting Info: you’ve heard about a potential new client but don’t have contact details yet. Still worth recording.
2. Contact Info Received: they’ve reached out, but you haven’t responded. Urgent: people keep calling other firms until someone answers.
3. Contact Made: you’ve spoken about their issue, where they’re located, the other parties (for the conflict check), and enough to decide whether to proceed.
4. Appointment Made: they cleared the conflict check; the consultation is scheduled.
5. Initial Consult: you’ve met, discussed their situation and your terms, and given them a retainer to sign.
6. Retainer Signed: signed and returned. Not won yet.
7. Retainer Funded (Won): the retainer is paid. Outlaw treats this as the win and offers to open the case.

If you run paid consultations, there’s a second way to win: Consult Sufficient (Won). The consultation itself was the service the client needed.

And three stages for leads that don’t go straight through: Lost (they decided against you), Refused (you declined or referred it out), and Waiting On (stalled for a known reason: funds, a mandatory waiting period).

How Checking Works

• Checking a stage stamps it with today’s date; you can edit the date afterward.
• Stages are checked in order: you can only uncheck the most recent one, so the trail stays consistent. Unchecking a stage clears its date, notes, and reasons.
• The outcome stages (Won, Lost, Refused, Waiting On) ask for reasons, drawn from the Win/Loss Reasons list you manage in Settings. That’s what makes the win/loss reporting meaningful.
• Waiting On also takes a follow-up date, and setting it creates a follow-up task (using the follow-up activity you configured in Lead Settings), so a parked lead resurfaces instead of being forgotten.
• Reaching a winning stage triggers the case creation flow, carrying the lead’s context over to the new case.

Why It Matters

Knowing where every lead sits lets Outlaw show you what’s coming: a pipeline heavy in early stages warns of lean months; one heavy in late stages says it’s time to market. The funnel and flow charts in Sales reporting are built directly on these stages: where leads stall, where they fall out, and how well you close.

Where You’ll See It

Milestones appears on a lead. It’s the firm’s own pipeline record, not something that belongs to a client’s case file.