How to Fix Sales Funnel Issues (a process)

Being in a fast-growth scale-up is stressful when you have poor pipeline conversion—top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel. As a VC/investor, you want to see smooth conversion metrics and hockey stick growth. So does the CEO. So does the CMO.

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But the latter is at the forefront of dealing with it.How do you get into the details of what you need to solve, what needs to be solved, and what actions you can take?

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I’ve had this conversation numerous times over the years, and it came up again this week on a call with a SaaS business's CRO.

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‍My advice is in three parts:

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‍1. You have to create “problem pods”. Bucket your problem statements into pods for commonality. You may have one problem, pod or 10. An example of a problem pod would be “Pipeline Conversion”, “Deal Velocity”, or “Repeatable Deal Cycle”. Then, within each pod, list all the associate problem statements, i.e. “How do we improve Deal Velocity” or “We don’t have enough leads at the top of the funnel”.

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2. You separate “problem pods” into individual projects. One layer down, you create a space for each pod. You list each problem statement down to build a table—from left to right, it should go: Problem Statement / Guiding Vision / Priority / Next Action. By running this process, you start problem-solving to address issues.

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3. Focus your attention at each team meeting or 1:1s. To take action, you need to orient the team around ownership to solve these problems with you. Give ownership. Make it a habit and way of working on digging into the details of solving your problem pods.

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Give it a try, and let me know how it goes!