Find the stage where your deals leak

What it does

Every pipeline leaks somewhere: buyers who book and don’t show, calls that never qualify, pitches that don’t close. Most founders guess where. Count it instead: how many deals reached each stage last quarter, how many moved on, and which step costs you the most signed deals against its target. That’s the one to fix first.

What you need

• Last quarter’s deals from your CRM, with the date each one reached each stage
• A target for each stage (see write down your sales process)
• A spreadsheet

How it works

1. 1

   Export last quarter’s deals with their stage dates

   For each deal: when it was booked, whether it showed, whether it qualified, and whether it signed. If your stage dates are wrong or missing, fix that first. Everything here depends on them.

2. 2

   Count each step

   Google Sheets: paste into A1, then swap in your counts and targets

   Stage	Deals that reached it	Moved on to the next	Rate	Target	Extra signed deals if it hit target
   Booked, then showed	80	52	=C2/B2	75%	=$C$4*(E2/D2-1)
   Showed, then qualified	52	40	=C3/B3	80%	=$C$4*(E3/D3-1)
   Qualified, then signed	40	6	=C4/B4	20%	=$C$4*(E4/D4-1)

   The last column multiplies through the whole pipeline: if this one step hit its target and nothing else changed, this is how many more deals you’d have signed.

3. 3

   Set your targets

   Your own best quarter if you have the history. If not, start from typical rates, and call them targets: about 75% of booked calls show, 80% of those qualify, and 20% of qualified calls sign.

4. 4

   Fix the step that costs the most deals

   Not the biggest gap in points: the biggest number in the last column. Then use the playbook for that step: cut no-shows for showing up, check fit before anyone writes for qualifying, and get the buyer to say what doing nothing costs for signing.

5. 5

   Count again next month

   One fix at a time, so you can see what it did.

What good looks like

One column tells you where your pipeline leaks most, and every month you fix that one step.

Mistakes to skip

• Fixing the biggest gap in points instead of the one that costs the most deals.
• Stage dates nobody updates. If they’re wrong, so is everything here.
• Fixing three stages at once.