Measuring Your Sales Funnel (Part 2 of 4)

In Part 1 of this four-part visit, I outlined the goal of this series on measuring your sales funnel, explained some key rules to apply to determine whether a prospect is in your sales funnel and gave you some guidelines for segmenting your sales funnel into different levels you can track.

Today's post is on measuring your actual sales funnel and determining what to change.

Measuring Your Actual Sales Funnel

Your first task is to get your list of current prospects and recent closed deals organized into the four levels we discussed last time. Start by using your favorite spreadsheet software to generate a list of every prospect to whom you are currently selling and every prospect to whom you sold within the past 30 days. Include at least the following seven columns:

• Opportunity ID (Combine the name of the company and individual to identify your sales opportunity, e.g., Three Tiers Creative -- Joe Jones.)
• Contact Phone (Enter the phone number of the person listed in the Opportunity ID column.)
• First Appointment (Enter the date of your first sales appointment with the prospect, regardless of whether it was in the past or is in the future.)
• Next Appointment (Enter the date of your next appointment or next step with this prospect. If it's an appointment, enter the exact date and time. If it's "Call next Thursday," type that.)
• Contract Out (Enter Yes if you have already closed the deal or have sent the contract and are waiting for a signature.)
• Closed Date (Enter the date the contract was signed.)
• Sales Funnel Level (We'll cover this below.)

Create your entire list before you continue.

I assume that you understand the four levels of the sales funnel as described in Part 1 and have already done the math to establish your target sales funnel. (If not, go back and do it before you continue.) You must now determine the correct funnel level of every sales opportunity and sale and enter that into the Sales Funnel Level column. Do that by following these steps in order:

1. Set the Sales Funnel Level to 4 (Closed Deals) for every client/customer with whom the deal has closed within the past 30 days of today's date. (If you accidentally listed deals that closed further in the past, delete those rows completely; we're tracking based on monthly targets only.)
2. Set the Sales Funnel Level to 3 (Contract Out) for every opportunity where you've delivered the contract and are waiting for a signature, and you have a follow-up appointment set at a specific, future date and time. For all opportunities where the contract is out but no specific appointment is set, enter Stalled. (In Phil's case, he would set the Sales Funnel Level to 3 for any prospect where he had verbally closed the deal but has yet to deliver the contract for signature.)
3. Set the Sales Funnel Level to 2 ( In Progress) for all opportunities where you've already had the first sales appointment, and you have a next appointment set at a specific, future date and time that is within 45 days of today's date. For opportunities where you've had the first appointment, but the next appointment is not specific, is in the past or is beyond 45 days, enter Stalled.
4. Set the Sales Funnel Level to 1 (First Appointment) for every prospect with whom your first appointment is a specific, future date and time within 21 days of today's date. For opportunities where the first appointment is not specific, is in the past (you called yesterday but the prospect didn't answer), or is beyond 21 days, enter Stalled.

At this point the Sales Funnel level should be set to 1, 2, 3, 4 or Stalled for every opportunity. If any opportunities are still blank, you'll need to figure out why and fix them before you continue.

Now pick up the phone and call every prospect marked Stalled, to see whether he or she is willing to set a specific appointment. A call, for example, might go something like "Hi, Joe, This is Gill Wagner. I have it in my calendar to call you sometime next Thursday to discuss sales training for your team. I was wondering if you'd be willing to set a specific time for that call, so we don't end up in a game of phone tag." (Use your imagination -- you'll be amazed at how many people say "Yes" to this simple request.)

Determining What To Change

To determine what behaviors need changing, you need to literally draw a picture of your current sales funnel by counting the number of opportunities in each level (ignoring the stalled ones) and depicting them in a graphical manner. Then, by comparing the graphical representation of your actual sales funnel to the graphical representation of your target sales funnel, you can quickly see what you need to change.

Here are two very typical patterns I find when working with new clients.

Salesperson: Joe Jones
Level	Target Funnel	Actual Funnel
1 - 1st Appt.	* * * * * * * *	* *
2 - In Progress	* * * * * *	* * * * * * * * * * * *
3 - Contract Out	* * * *	* *
4 - Closed Deals	* *	*

Take a close look at Joe's sales funnel representations above and compare two things:

• Target numbers to actual numbers of each level
• The ratios between levels within target to the ratios of levels within actual.

Here's what I see:

• Joe has closed only one sale in the past 30 days compared to the two he should have closed. But is Joe's problem that he can't close, that he doesn't have enough opportunities to close, that prospects won't sign the contracts he gives them, or something else?
• Joe's ratio of Contract Out and Closed Deals is 2 to 1 in both target and actual columns. So getting prospects to return signed contracts isn't the issue.
• Joe has far more prospects In Progress than he should have. And his ratio of In Progress to Contract Out is way off. This suggests that he could probably use help at identifying tire-kickers (and getting them out of his funnel altogether) and at moving people more quickly through his sales process so he can get them to the Contract Out stage.
• Joe obviously has far fewer First Appointments than he needs.

Literally at a glance, Joe's sales manager (even if it's Joe himself) can look at his's target vs. actual sales funnel patterns and see that Joe is avoiding prospecting in favor of "keeping himself busy" with prospects who are probably never going to buy. And by knowing exactly what to fix, the sales manager can make incredibly smart choices when it comes to training, coaching and so forth.

Now it's your turn. Take a close look at Sally's sales funnels:

Salesperson: Sally Smith
Level	Target Funnel	Actual Funnel
1 - 1st Appt.	* * * * * * * *	* * * * * * *
2 - In Progress	* * * * * *	* * *
3 - Contract Out	* * * *	* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
4 - Closed Deals	* *	* *

Exercise One: Compare Sally's target vs. actual numbers, then her ratios between levels, and tell me what she needs to change. (Respond by entering a comment below.) (Note: You should do this exercise yourself before you read the comments submitted by others.)

Exercise Two: Set your Actual Sales Funnel numbers and draw your picture. Then if you need assistance analyzing what to change, just ask.

Next week we'll discuss how to get inside the heads of your prospects, so you can determine whether they're really going to buy, or whether you're spinning your wheels.

--
Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association