You will be able to find the stage where your pipeline loses the most people and pick one fix.
A month ends with one sale against a target of two. The usual reaction is to do more of everything: more calls, more emails, more events, longer hours. Sometimes that helps. Often it just produces more of the same result, because the problem was never the amount of effort. It was one stage of the pipeline quietly losing people.
A pipeline is like a pipe with several joints. If water is not coming out of the end, pouring more in at the top only helps if the pipe is sound. When one joint is leaking, you find that joint and fix it. This lesson shows you how to find yours from the rates you already track.
Take last month's counts from your CRM or scorecard: touches, conversations, meetings, proposals and sales. Then work out each stage-to-stage rate, the same four rates from lesson 7.1, Pipeline maths: work backwards from your target.
Here is Mei's last month, with example figures. She made 180 touches, which led to 18 conversations, 6 meetings, 3 proposals and 1 sale.
Her rates work out like this: 18 conversations from 180 touches is one in ten, and 6 meetings from 18 conversations is one in three. Further down, 3 proposals from 6 meetings is one in two, and 1 sale from 3 proposals is one in three.
Now compare with the rates she planned on in lesson 7.1: one in five touches becoming a conversation, one in three conversations becoming a meeting, one in two meetings becoming a proposal, one in three proposals becoming a sale. Three of her four rates matched the plan exactly. Only the first one fell short: one in ten instead of one in five, half what she expected. That is the leak. She did the planned number of touches, but half the expected conversations came out of them, and every stage after that was smaller as a result.
If you have no plan to compare with yet, compare each rate with your own previous months instead, or look for the rate that changed most.
Each stage tends to break for its own reasons, so the weak rate tells you where to look.
Low replies, meaning few conversations from your touches, point to the list or the message. Either you are reaching people who do not fit your profile, or the trigger is stale, or the message is not landing. Check the list first: are these really the people from lesson 1.4? Then check the message against lesson 4.1, Anatomy of a cold email that gets a reply, and your opener against lesson 3.1.
Low meetings from conversations point to the ask. People are replying but not agreeing to meet. Often the ask is too big, too early, or unclear. "Can we book an hour next week to go through your accounts?" asks a lot. "Would a fifteen-minute call help you decide if it's worth looking at?" asks less.
Low proposals after meetings point to discovery: the meeting did not uncover a problem worth solving, or did not uncover it clearly enough to propose anything. That skill has its own course, Discovery: questions that find the real problem.
Low wins after proposals point to how you present the proposal, handle objections and close. That is covered in Present, handle objections, and close.
Once you have found the weakest stage, pick one change to test this month. Only one.
The temptation is to fix everything at once: a new list, a new email, a new opener, a new ask. If the numbers improve, you will not know which change did it, so you will not know what to keep. If they get worse, you will not know what to undo. Changing one thing keeps the cause and effect visible, the same principle as testing emails in lesson 4.4, Write and test three cold emails.
Mei looked more closely at her replies. Most of the few conversations she had came from prospects she found through job ads. The ones she found by browsing a business directory rarely replied. So the trouble was who she was writing to, and the wording could stay. Her one change for the month: build the next list only from fresh triggers, mainly job ads and new outlet announcements, and keep the email and cadence exactly as they were.
Darren's numbers told a different story. His conversations and meetings were on plan, but only one in four of his meetings led to a proposal. His leak was in discovery, so his one change was to prepare five better questions for first meetings, and to take the discovery course.
With a few dozen prospects a month, the rates jump around. One extra sale moves your close rate a long way. So treat a single month as a strong hint, not a verdict, especially for the later stages where the counts are smallest.
If a rate is only slightly below plan, wait another month before acting. If it is far below plan, like Mei's one in ten against one in five, act now. And when you test a change, give it a full month before judging it.
The activity below asks you to work out your stage-to-stage rates for last month, circle the weakest one, and write the one change you will test this month.
Compare your stage-to-stage rates for the last month, circle the weakest, and write one change you will test this month.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).