ABC Company is fictional. Figures come from a real sales organization; every name has been changed.
02 of 10 · The Scan
Sales Conversion Rates
By stage, by seller, by source: where deals advance, stall and die.
1The question
Where exactly do your deals die?
2Why it matters
Funnels rarely leak evenly. Losses bunch up at one or two steps, and an overall win rate hides where.
“Deals die after the presentation, after sitting 40 days” is something you can act on. “Our win rate is low” isn't.
The same table cut by seller separates a coaching problem from a process problem. Cut by source, it shows whether a lead's origin changes its odds before anyone touches it.
What the research says
Knowing an outcome raises how likely it seemed beforehand, and people are largely unaware it happened. Write down where you think deals die before you compute it, or every answer will look obvious.
Fischhoff (1975), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1(3), 288–299 · doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.1.3.288
Pre-registration separates a tested prediction from a pattern found after the fact. The seller and source cuts are declared before the table is run.
CEvidence grade C. Practitioner craft. Applied the same way every time, and labeled honestly as craft. Practitioner-built. Its value is consistency, not proof.
What it doesn't settle. No peer-reviewed study validates stage-conversion analysis as a predictor of anything. It is a descriptive ruler, graded C, and its value is consistency.
3What to collect, every time
Input A number the CRM can't give you: the plan, quotas, working weeks, spend.Field Does the field exist, is it required, and who fills it in?Definition Your own definition of a thing we then compute against.Prediction Your answer now, in writing, checked against the record later.
Definition
Your stages, in order, with what must be true about the BUYER to leave each oneExit criteria. Every conversion number is computed against them.
Definition
When a lead becomes an opportunity, and who decidesSets the denominator for every rate downstream.
Field
A dated milestone for each stageWithout dates you can count where deals are, not where they died.
Definition
When the stage list last changedSo conversion isn't computed across two different funnels.
Prediction
Which stage do most deals die in? Which seller converts best?Written now, scored against the table.
4How it's computed
Take every closed deal in the window.
Find the furthest milestone each deal reached. A skipped step counts as passed through.
For each step: deals that reached it, deals that advanced, and deals that died there.
Repeat the same table one seller at a time and one source at a time.
5What ABC's record shows
Where deals advance and die
2,251 closed deals · Closed deals created Jan 2024–Jul 2026
Opportunity created
2,251
62.5% advanced · 844 died here
Needs audit held
1,407
50.3% advanced · 699 died here
Solution presented
708
41.4% advanced · 415 died here
Won
293
More lost deals die at the first step than anywhere else: 844 closed with no needs audit recorded. The leakiest conversion is the last one: 41.4% of presented deals were won.
A blank date isn't always a skipped meeting. The audit date is filled on 95% of wins and 57% of losses, and 15 of 293 wins have no presentation date. Some of what looks like “died before the audit” is a meeting nobody recorded. That's a field to fix before the funnel can be fully trusted.
By seller · win rate (closed deals)
Val Rasmussen
30.4%
Emery Kettering
13.8%
Oakley Delacroix
16.7%
Harper Zeller
17.2%
Oakley Kowalczyk
4.9%
Tatum Ingram
13.0%
Pax Whitlock
8.1%
Jessie Fitzgerald
3.9%
Pax Kowalczyk
0.0%
Cyd Northcote
4.8%
Sellers with 60+ closed deals in the window.
By source · reached the needs audit
Inside Sales
55%
Broker
57%
Referral - Personal Network
48%
Web
81%
Referral - Channel Partner
78%
Referral - Client
88%
Cold Call
61%
Call In
96%
Networking
53%
Other
37%
Open deals stuck
52
past 45 days in stage · $523K
Open deals aged
30
past 73 days (90th percentile)
Health census date
18%
filled on 2026 deals · 1% before: a field added this year
6What a sales leader does Monday
Write exit criteria for the leakiest step, in buyer terms.
Review the deals that died there last quarter in one meeting: what did the buyer not do?
Coach the seller-specific gaps one-on-one, not in the team meeting.
7The founder version
Building your first CRM? Do this now, so you can answer the question in a year.
Name your stages after what the buyer has done, not what you did.
Add a date field for every milestone you care about, today.
Keep lost deals as closed-lost with a reason. Never delete them.