Sales funnel
A sales funnel is the path from first contact to payment, split into stages, showing how many people reach each step and where they drop out.
What it looks like
Picture every person who contacted the company in a month. Some replied to the first message. Fewer received an offer. Fewer still agreed, and only part of them paid. Each step is narrower than the one before, which is where the name comes from.
A simple funnel for a messaging team might read: 1,000 inbound chats, 600 real conversations, 250 offers, 90 agreements, 70 payments. The numbers are a made-up example. What matters is the shape and the ratio between neighbouring stages.
Why it matters
The funnel turns a vague feeling of “sales are slow” into a specific address. If people stop answering after the first reply, the problem is speed or tone. If they disappear after the price, the offer or the argument is weak. If they agree but never pay, the follow-through is broken.
For an owner, it is also a planning tool. Knowing the ratios, you can estimate how many new contacts are needed to hit a revenue target.
Typical mistake
Treating the funnel as one company-wide average. It looks tidy but hides the truth: one rep may lose people at the first message, another at the price. Mixing different channels and lead sources in one funnel has the same effect.
Another mistake is fixing the bottom first. Pushing harder to close usually helps less than finding the stage where most people quietly leave.
What to do
Agree on clear stage definitions, count the same way every month and look at the funnel by rep, channel and source. Then work on the widest leak, one at a time.
More in Signals
- Hiring through Telegram and WhatsApp: how to run candidates in chat and not lose themTo run candidates in Telegram and WhatsApp without losing them, answer fast, mark out the funnel and keep the history with the company rather than in a recruiter's phone. A first message, short screening, a specific invitation and reminders cover the path. Mailings to a candidate list should be relevant, varied and paced. A good candidate is gone within days if your team is slow.
- Why your CRM isn't working in sales, and what to do about itA CRM stops working when it lives apart from where the selling happens: clients write in messaging apps, sales reps answer from personal phones, and the records get an after-the-fact retelling. The data starts to drift, you stop trusting it, and the CRM goes empty. The fix is not more fields or penalties. It is order: you decide who owns the numbers and the conversations, what counts as a fact and who answers for it, and then you work by those rules yourself.