Sales funnel conversion rate: at which stage you lose clients

An online school buys ads: there are plenty of requests but few payments, and nobody tracks the sales funnel conversion rate. The head of the school is thinking of adding budget or hiring another manager. But the funnel would show something else: 40% pay after a trial lesson, yet only 15% of requests ever get to the lesson. The money is lost at booking the lesson, and that's the step to fix.

Sales funnel conversion rate is the share of leads that moved from one deal stage to the next. The “Funnel analytics” section shows how many leads (requests in the CRM) reached each sales stage, where they dropped off and how many paid. A funnel stage is a deal stage in the CRM, for example “New lead”, “Contacted”, “Invoice sent”. How to set them up is covered in the article CRM pipeline stages.

The section has no data of its own: it counts the same leads and payments as the CRM. A payment entered in the lead card goes into the report by itself, so there's no need to merge spreadsheets by hand. More on this in the article how to record a payment in CRM. The section comes with your account at no extra cost, unlike separate end-to-end analytics services.

Watch the three-minute video, and below you'll find the step-by-step setup.

Why businesses need sales funnel analysis

• The head of sales uses the “bottleneck” label to find the weakest transition and fixes exactly that one. A low “New lead → Contacted” rate means managers call back too late.
• In B2B sales, you can see which managers bring deals to payment and which only collect leads. The script of the employee tagged “Best” can be passed on to the rest of the team.
• A marketer sees on the “Sources” tab which channel brings payments, not just requests. A channel with cheap requests that never pay is a candidate for a budget cut. What each channel cost is shown by ad ROI by source.
• A clinic, salon or car service sees in the “Rejections” block how many booked clients didn't show up. That's a signal to turn on appointment confirmation by a voice bot.
• A real estate agency uses the “Sales forecast” and “Deal duration” to see how much money will come from leads in progress, and when. With a 20-day deal duration, last week's ads couldn't have paid off yet.

How sales funnel conversion rate is calculated

The section takes the leads created in the selected period and everything that happened to them afterwards: moves between stages and payments.

1. In the “Reached the stage” mode, a lead counts for a stage if it was on it or went further, according to the CRM history.
2. Between stages, you see the conversion: the share of leads that moved on to the next stage. For example: “↓ 45% moved on · 90 of 200 · −110 dropped”.
3. The funnel bottleneck is the weakest transition. It is marked with an amber “bottleneck” label and is looked for among stages that had at least 5 leads.
4. “Paid” means leads with a payment in the card, at any stage.

How to set up sales funnel analytics

1. 1
   Open the section

   The “Leads” menu → “Funnel analytics”. You need the “Leads” right in the current project.
2. 2
   Start the wizard

   On your first visit, the “Funnel stages” window opens by itself. Later, the “Funnel stages” button in the header opens it.
3. 3
   Tick the sales stages

   On the left, tick the stages a deal goes through. Don't tick robots, mailings or service stages: the “N passed” counter for 90 days will give you a hint.
4. 4
   Set the order

   On the right, in “Your funnel”, drag the stages from top to bottom in sales order. Join stages that mean the same thing with the chain button “Merge with the next stage”.
5. 5
   Mark rejections

   Click “Next” and tick the stages where lost leads go, for example “Refusal” and “Unqualified”.
6. 6
   Save

   Click “Save”. There is one setting per project, shared by everyone who opens the section.
7. 7
   Choose the period

   The “Lead creation date” field is set to “Last 30 days” by default. The “Responsible” and “Source” fields help narrow the report.

Sales forecast, deal duration and rejections on the “Sales analysis” tab

At the top there are four tiles: “Leads in the period”, “Paid”, “Payments” and “Average check”. Under “Paid” is the conversion to payment. Under the others is the change compared with the previous period of the same length.

The “On the stage now” mode shows where leads are right now. Long bars at early stages mean unprocessed requests. “By amount” shows the funnel in money. Click a stage to expand the details: how many paid and how many dropped off after the previous stage.

Under the funnel there are three blocks:

• “Sales forecast” — how much money is expected from unpaid leads and with what probability;
• “Deal duration (median)” — how many days after a lead is created the first payment comes. The median is the middle value: half of the deals close faster, half take longer;
• “Rejections” — the share of the period's leads at rejection stages.

Sales rep performance and ad sources

The “Employee performance” tab compares responsible employees by leads, payments, conversion, payment total, average check and rejections. The “Best” tag goes to the highest conversion among those with at least 5 leads. Click a row, and that manager's funnel opens on the right, with their own “bottleneck”.

The “Sources” tab shows the same by ad source. The “Capture type” switch splits leads by how they came in: a website request, a call, a chat, an import.

You can compare managers by channel the same way. Pick an employee in the “Responsible” field, open “Sources” and turn on “Capture type” — you'll see how they bring calls, website requests and chats to payment. Often one manager is stronger on calls and another on website requests. Give each of them what they sell best: how to set this up is covered in the article lead distribution between managers.

How to compare conversion with the previous period

Launched a bot, a script or a new manager? The “Period comparison” tab compares stages, payments, conversion to payment, the total and the average check with the previous period of the same length. Real stage-by-stage conversions are also useful for planning: plug them into the sales target breakdown.

Read also: CRM pipeline stages: set up your sales funnel and client alerts, Marketing ROI tracking: which ads pay off and which drain your budget, Sales target breakdown: leads and ad budget you need for your profit, Automated daily sales report by email and Telegram every morning