How to Use ClickUp for Business Development
ClickUp is a powerful workspace that helps business development teams organize leads, streamline outreach, and close deals faster with AI-powered tools. This guide walks you step-by-step through setting up workspaces, creating deal pipelines, and using automation so your team can focus on building relationships, not chasing tasks.
Why Use ClickUp for Business Development?
Business development work is naturally complex. You are juggling prospect research, outreach, follow-ups, proposals, and internal collaboration. Without a single source of truth, tasks slip, opportunities stall, and revenue suffers.
Using a centralized platform gives you:
- One place to track accounts, contacts, and deals
- Clear visibility into pipeline status and next steps
- Automations to cut manual admin work
- AI assistance for research, writing, and analysis
ClickUp provides all of this in a customizable workspace that scales from solo founders to large revenue teams.
Set Up Your ClickUp Workspace Structure
Before you build detailed workflows, start with a clean structure. This helps everyone understand where to put information and how to find it later.
1. Create a Business Development Space in ClickUp
- Create a new Space and name it something clear like “Business Development” or “Revenue Operations.”
- Choose a color and icon so it is easy to spot in the sidebar.
- Enable the features you need, such as tasks, docs, whiteboards, and dashboards.
This Space will hold everything related to your go-to-market and partnership efforts.
2. Build Key Folders for Your ClickUp Space
Within your new Space, organize work into Folders that map to your core business development activities.
Common Folder examples include:
- Lead Management – inbound and outbound leads
- Account Research – target account lists and insights
- Partnerships – strategic alliances and channel partners
- Customer Expansion – upsells and cross-sells
Each Folder can then contain Lists designed for more specific workflows.
Create a Deal Pipeline in ClickUp
A visual pipeline is essential for understanding where every opportunity stands. ClickUp makes it simple to model your sales or partnership process as a series of stages.
3. Design a Deal List with Custom Statuses
- Create a new List called “Deals Pipeline” inside your Business Development Space.
- Switch to the Board view for a Kanban-style pipeline.
- Customize task statuses to reflect your deal stages, such as:
- New Lead
- Contacted
- Qualified
- Proposal Sent
- Negotiation
- Closed Won
- Closed Lost
Each task in this List represents a single deal or opportunity.
4. Add Custom Fields to Your ClickUp Pipeline
Custom Fields turn your pipeline into a lightweight CRM. Add fields such as:
- Deal Value
- Close Date
- Deal Owner
- Lead Source
- Company Size
- Industry
With these in place, you can sort, filter, and group deals to see where to focus your efforts.
Capture and Qualify Leads in ClickUp
Business development depends on a steady flow of good-fit leads. Centralizing those leads makes follow-up easier and more reliable.
5. Build a Lead Intake List
Create a List called “Leads” and configure it as the intake point for all new opportunities.
For each lead task, include:
- Contact name and company
- Email and phone number
- Source (event, referral, outbound, etc.)
- Priority or fit score
Use task templates so every new lead is created with the same structure.
6. Use Forms to Send Leads Directly into ClickUp
- Create a Form view on your “Leads” List.
- Add fields for key information, like company, role, and use case.
- Embed the Form on your website or share the link with partners.
Every submission becomes a new task, automatically placed in the right List with the right fields populated.
Use ClickUp AI for Faster Outreach and Research
AI can dramatically reduce time spent researching, writing, and planning. Within the platform, built-in ClickUp AI helps teams work faster without leaving their workspace.
7. Draft Outreach Messages with ClickUp AI
When you open a task or Doc for outreach, you can use AI to:
- Generate first-draft emails tailored to a role or industry
- Rewrite messages to be shorter, clearer, or friendlier
- Turn meeting notes into follow-up emails with action items
Always review and adjust AI-generated content so it reflects your voice and specific offer.
8. Summarize Research and Notes in ClickUp
Business development involves heavy research: company context, stakeholders, and competitive insights. Instead of reading long notes repeatedly, you can:
- Paste research into a Doc and ask AI for a short summary
- Highlight key risks, needs, and buying triggers
- Turn raw notes into a clean account brief or call prep document
This keeps your team aligned and ready for high-value conversations.
Automate Repetitive Workflows in ClickUp
Automation is where productivity really compounds. Once you define your process, ClickUp can routinely move tasks through stages and notify the right people.
9. Create Automations for Pipeline Movement
Within your Deals Pipeline List, set up automations such as:
- When status changes to “Qualified,” automatically assign a deal owner.
- When status changes to “Proposal Sent,” set a follow-up date field for seven days later.
- When a deal is moved to “Closed Won,” move the task to a “Customer Expansion” List.
These make sure important steps are never missed and handoffs are consistent.
10. Use Task Templates and Checklists
Create templates for common deal types or campaigns, including:
- Standard checklists for discovery calls
- Steps for partner onboarding
- Implementation milestones after closing
When a new deal is created, apply the template so every stage has clear, predefined actions.
Measure Performance with ClickUp Dashboards
To manage business development effectively, you need visibility into what is working. Reporting helps you adjust your strategy and prove impact.
11. Build a Revenue Dashboard in ClickUp
Create a Dashboard and add widgets to track:
- Number of new leads by source
- Deals by stage
- Forecasted revenue based on deal value and probability
- Cycle time from lead to close
Filter by owner, region, or segment to understand where your best opportunities come from.
12. Share Insights with Stakeholders
Share your Dashboard with leadership or cross-functional teams so everyone sees the same data. This encourages alignment around goals, bottlenecks, and resource needs.
Collaborate Across Teams in ClickUp
Business development rarely happens in isolation. Product, marketing, customer success, and operations all play a part in winning and expanding accounts.
13. Use Comments and Assigned Comments
On each deal or account task, use comments to:
- Ask for technical feedback from product
- Request case studies from marketing
- Loop in customer success for expansion plans
Assigned comments turn these into mini-tasks with clear owners and due dates.
14. Centralize Enablement Docs
Store playbooks, pitch decks, and competitive one-pagers in Docs. Link these Docs directly from deal tasks so reps always have the latest materials at hand.
Next Steps: Extend ClickUp Across Your Revenue Operations
Once your business development system is running smoothly, you can extend the same structure to marketing campaigns, onboarding projects, and customer success workflows. The more teams you connect, the more value you get from a unified workspace.
For additional strategy and implementation support around revenue operations, you can explore consulting resources like Consultevo, which focuses on modern go-to-market systems and tools.
To dive deeper into AI-powered business development and see specific examples of how organizations use these capabilities, review the original guide on how to use AI for business development. Combine these concepts with the steps in this article to build a scalable, high-performing ClickUp workspace for your entire revenue team.
Need Help With ClickUp?
If you want expert help building, automating, or scaling your ClickUp workspace, work with ConsultEvo — trusted ClickUp Solution Partners.
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