Find the stage that leaks before you change the one that is loudest

When a founder says sales are slow, the fix that follows is almost always more activity at the top. More outreach, more content, a bigger list. It is the intervention with the shortest distance between deciding and doing something.

It is also the right fix roughly a fifth of the time. The other four fifths, the pipeline is leaking somewhere further down and pouring more in at the top simply moves the same loss to a larger number.

Five stages, five different failures#

A pipeline is not one thing that works or does not. It is a sequence, and each stage answers a different question.

Reach. Are we talking to people who have the problem? A failure here looks like low response rates and it is a list problem, not a message problem.

Interest. Do they recognise the problem when we describe it? A failure here looks like polite replies that go nowhere. The list is right and the words are wrong.

Qualified. Can this person actually sign? A failure here is the most expensive one, because it consumes the most time before it shows itself. Enthusiastic conversations with someone who has no budget authority feel exactly like progress.

Proposal. Is what we sell in a shape they can buy? A failure here looks like proposals going quiet. Often the work is wanted and the packaging is wrong, too large, too long, or requiring a decision at a level above the person you have been talking to.

Closed. Does the number survive procurement or a finance review? A failure here is a pricing and terms problem and it is usually the easiest of the five to fix once you know that is what you are looking at.

Each of those has a different remedy, and four of the five get worse if you respond by increasing activity at the top.

How to find it without a CRM project#

You do not need instrumentation to do this. You need thirty deals and an afternoon.

List the last thirty opportunities. For each one, record the last stage it reached and the reason it stopped, in the words the other party used rather than the words you would prefer. Then count.

The stage with the largest drop is the one to work on. If it is not the stage you have been working on, that is the finding, and it is a common one. Attention tends to settle on whichever stage produces the most visible activity, which is usually the top, rather than wherever the loss is concentrated.

Two cautions. The reasons people give for not buying are often the polite version rather than the real one, so weigh what they did more heavily than what they said. And thirty is a small sample. It will tell you where to look. It will not settle an argument about a five per cent difference.

Then change one thing#

Having found the stage, change one variable at it and let enough volume through to see whether it moved. Changing the list, the message and the offer at the same time means that whatever happens next, you will not know what caused it.

This is slower than it sounds like it should be, and it is the part most often skipped. A pipeline that is being adjusted everywhere at once produces plenty of activity and no information.

What this looks like as a piece of work#

For us this is usually a diagnostic, one to two weeks, ending in a written account of where the pipeline actually leaks, what we think is causing it, and what we would test first. Sometimes the conclusion is that the pipeline is fine and the problem is capacity, or pricing, or that the market is smaller than assumed. That is still a result and we would rather say it in week two than build a motion on top of it.