THE DOOD FIELD GUIDE / IMPLEMENTATION
Sales funnel stages you can measure consistently
Use cohort definitions to find the gap between an enquiry and a qualified opportunity.
By Mrunal Walke ↗ FOLLOW THE HANDOFF
Open a worked example ↗
Illustrative cohort: 100 accepted enquiries in July produce 25 qualified opportunities. If 5 of those later become customers, enquiry-to-customer conversion is 5% for that cohort; it is not five wins divided by unrelated August enquiries.
Keep the funnel distinct from the pipeline
The funnel summarizes movement between populations. The pipeline holds individual opportunities and next actions. Define both, then decide which question you are answering. A count of emails sent is an activity measure, not a count of qualified buyers.
Choose the denominator before drawing the chart
Record accepted date, qualification date and decision date. State whether a chart follows one entry cohort or shows events during a calendar period. Do not mix the two. Exclude spam using a documented rule and keep rejected or invalid submissions visible in operational reporting.
Make missing information visible
If source is missing, show an unknown-source group rather than dropping the record. If a decision is still open, do not count it as lost. Allow enough time for the cohort to mature before comparing conversion rates. Different service lines may have different cycle lengths.
Use the gap to choose an action
Low capture-to-response performance calls for an ownership or delivery investigation. A qualification gap may need better fit questions. A proposal-to-win gap may need sales review. Change one well-defined part of the process and compare the same cohort definition after the change.
Can I average conversion rates across sources?
Use summed numerators divided by summed denominators for the combined rate. A simple average of percentages can over-weight small sources.
MAKE IT PART OF YOUR WORKFLOW
A useful tool. A connected business.
Bring your customer, inventory and accounting workflows together. Tell us where the handoff gets difficult.
