Where Should You Start Fixing Your Sales Funnel?

Start with the one stage that is leaking most, and let your data pick it. When a company asks me where to begin, my first question is always the same: what is your biggest pain point? What is getting in the way of your success? The answer usually lands in one of three places, and each one needs a different fix.

What are the usual problem areas?

• Not enough leads. Not enough people are reaching out to say they love what you do and want you to come see them.
• Leads that don't become appointments. Plenty of people are knocking on your door, but for some reason you are not converting them into an appointment.
• Appointments that don't become business. You get plenty of appointments, but you are not getting to the quote. Nobody is asking you for the business.

Most owners think more leads is always the answer. Often it isn't. Everybody thinks getting more leads is the best thing, but they don't realize that if they call a lead back in four days, nobody remembers anything by then. More leads into a leaky stage just means more waste.

How do I find the weak stage?

Write down the numbers for one month. Here is a simple example: 100 leads come in, 25 become appointments, those 25 turn into 12 proposals, and the 12 proposals turn into 3 contracts. Now look at the conversion at each step. Where do you feel you are not efficient or not effective? That is where I spend my time.

The stage names depend on your business. For MedTech I use four stages: lead acquisition, lead conversion, discovery to proposal, and proposal to close. For a consumer health practice I use five: lead acquisition, consult booking, consult to plan, plan to start, and retain and reactivate. A practice needs that fifth stage because keeping and bringing back patients is its own job.

Why not fix everything at once?

Because a small team cannot carry it, and you will not know what worked. I don't try to come in and boil the ocean. The first thing I try to do with anybody is fix one thing: the one thing that is getting in the way of what they need to deliver. Fix it, measure it, then move to the next stage.

Focus matters even more for small companies. Many of the teams I talk to don't have the bandwidth or the cash to hire dozens of people. They have five or six. A team that size can fix one stage well, or touch five stages badly.

It also helps to put a value on each fix before you choose. A scorecard that models each stage can show the yearly impact of, say, lifting lead conversion from 25% to 35% while keeping the other stages the same. When you can see the impact of each stage side by side, the choice of where to start usually becomes obvious.

What does a fix look like at each stage?

It depends on the leak. If leads go cold before anyone calls them, speed is often the fix: something or someone responding within 90 seconds instead of days. If appointments stall before a proposal, look hard at how you run discovery and what you bring back to the buyer. Every stage, from lead generation through to retention, can have its own process, and AI can support the repetitive parts of each one.

Where to start

This week, pull last month's numbers for each stage: leads, appointments or consults, proposals or plans, and closed deals or starts. Work out the conversion rate between each pair. Circle the lowest one. That is your first project, and it stays your only project until the number moves.