Chart: Pipeline Funnel Analysis
The Pipeline Funnel Analysis chart gives a stage-by-stage view of how effectively your business is converting leads into paying customers.
For SaaS businesses, it's an essential tool for understanding the health of both sales-led and self-service go-to-market models — showing where leads are progressing, stalling, or dropping out of the funnel. Sales and marketing leaders can use it to assess pipeline coverage, set conversion targets, and identify where to focus effort.
Use the analysis to answer questions like:
- How do your business’ sales-led efforts compare to your self-service model?
- How many leads and opportunities do you need to hit your sales targets?
- How much pipeline coverage do you need?
- How healthy is your go-to-market strategy? (For example, if the average won opportunity size is larger in your self-serve segment and cost of acquisition is lower, then you might want to consider increasing leads at the top of the funnel.)
Sales Lifecycle
It’s simplistic to think that leads become subscribers by progressing through each stage of your sales funnel: starting as a lead, having an opportunity added, progressing through the stages in a sales pipeline, and finally, purchasing your product or service. In reality, a customer’s sales journey often isn’t linear. Pipeline Funnel Analysis gives an overview of how effectively leads are progressing, at which stage they may be dropping off, and how many subscribers you gain via self-service purchases.
Before you begin
- ChartMogul automatically imports lead and trial data from a number of our integrations. If your Pipeline Funnel Analysis appears empty, you may need to set up lead tracking.
- To view opportunities, you’ll need to have at least one sales pipeline. Learn more about setting up sales pipelines.
- Review our CRM user guide to understand a typical sales representative workflow in ChartMogul.
Chart Notes
Only customers with a Lead created at date contribute to this chart. If a lead does not have a Lead created at date they will not contribute to this chart, though they will have a lead status. Learn more about customer and subscription statuses.
Reading a Pipeline Funnel Analysis
A customer is included in the analysis as long as their Lead created at date is within the range of the reporting period.
ChartMogul provides the following insights:
- Converted to paid (self service) — leads who have a New Business MRR movement but no opportunities
- Lost — opportunities moved to Closed Lost from the current stage
- Opportunity created — leads who had an opportunity created
- Progressed — qualified to a later stage in the pipeline
- Still here — have not qualified to a later stage in the pipeline
- Unqualified — leads who have been classified as Unqualified Lead from the current stage
ChartMogul breaks the funnel down into three sections:
Leads
ChartMogul uses a customer’s lead status to report the following:
- New — total number of leads created during the reporting period.
- Working — total number of leads created during the reporting period that are classified as Working Lead or have qualified to a later stage.
- Qualified — total number of leads created during the reporting period that are classified as Qualified Lead or have qualified to a later stage.
Opportunities
A lead progresses in the funnel when they have an opportunity.
ChartMogul breaks down the Opportunities funnel by each deal stage in your sales pipeline. For example, if you’re using the default New Business pipeline:
- Discovery — total number of opportunities created during the reporting period.
- Evaluation — total number of opportunities belonging to leads that were created during the reporting period that are classified as Evaluation or have qualified to a later stage.
- Negotiation — total number of opportunities belonging to leads that were created during the reporting period that are classified as Negotiation or have qualified to a later stage.
- Won — total number of opportunities belonging to leads that were created during the reporting period that are classified as Won. ChartMogul reports the average MRR of all won opportunities below the Opportunities funnel.
Self-service New Business
Total number of customers who have a New Business MRR movement but do not have an opportunity in the reporting period.
Configuring your analysis
By default, ChartMogul allows you to view your entire funnel. View a specific section by selecting Leads created within or Opportunities created within.
Select a predefined reporting period such as Last 90 days, Last quarter or This month.
Use the Sales pipeline drop-down to select the pipeline funnel you’d like to view.
Next Steps
Forecast the amount of new MRR in a given month with Deal Stage Probability Forecast.