Sales Funnel Health
Best Practice Review Process

The following are the questions we are most frequently asked regarding Funnel Reviews and assessing Funnel health and our response to those questions.

1. What exactly are the Sales Funnel and the Funnel review process?

The purpose of the Sales Funnel is to evaluate a sales person’s book of business. The Sales Funnel consists of all of the opportunities (Single Sales Objectives for our Miller Heiman clients) that an individual sales person is working on. All Sales Funnels are different, depending on the business that you are in. However, generally speaking there are at least four “positions” in the Funnel that represent what type of work the sales person is doing in that particular phase. For example, the generic Miller Heiman model recommends Prospect, Qualify, Cover the Bases and Close the Order.

The Funnel review process is designed for the sales person, and in some cases his or her manager, to assess the health of the Funnel. A healthy Funnel is one where there are sufficient opportunities in number and dollars to enable the sales person to achieve their quota or sales goal. In addition, based on the shape of the Funnel (more on that later), the sales person can determine what type of work they should do more of or less of to improve the overall health of their Funnel.

2. Who should participate in a Funnel review?

The sales person who owns the Funnel must participate, and may complete the review on by themselves. Less frequently, we recommend that key sales leaders and operations personnel participate in a more formal review process with the sales person.

3. How often should a sales person conduct a Funnel review?

It is our opinion that the sales person should conduct a Funnel health check and update the Funnel weekly. The more formal Funnel review process with a manager can be conducted bi-weekly to every couple of months depending on the length of the company’s sales cycle.

4.  What impact does frequent Funnel reviews have on a sales person performance?

The Funnel review is meant to determine how the sales person will allocate his or her Selling Time (face to face or phone to phone contact with an individual who wishes to take action-Growth or Trouble-talking to them about the discrepancy that they perceive or asking questions to uncover discrepancy). On average, a sales person has five to ten hours per week of actual Selling Time. This being the case, it is imperative that the sales person focus their attention on getting the actions to move the opportunity to the next position in the Funnel.

By scheduling their Selling Time and assessing their Funnel health, a sales person will quickly see a reduction in their sales cycle and an improvement in their close rates. In addition, he or she will be able to identify “bottle necks” that may require management intervention or assistance.

5.  What is the Funnel review or health check process?

The weekly Funnel health check should follow these steps:

• Input all new opportunities into the sales funnel on your lap top. Include your next actions.

• Sort your opportunities into position in the funnel
  o Prospect
  o Qualify
  o Cover the Base
  o Close the Order

• Total the dollars in each position in the funnel.

• Determine your funnel shape.

• Ask yourself these questions:
  a) What is the health of the funnel?
  b) Am I likely to hit quota?
  c) Considering my close rate, is there enough business in the top of the funnel to achieve targets?
  d) Are there areas in the funnel where sales consistently bottle neck? Does that mean a new process is required?
  e) Where do I need to focus my efforts for the next six weeks?
  f) Is there a shape to the funnel when the dollars are added up at each macro level position?
  g) What is the meaning of this shape?

• Determine your next action that you need to take to advance the sale.

• Determine, based on your funnel shape how much selling time of the total you should spend working on each position in the funnel.

• Assign an amount of time required to complete each action in your funnel.

• Schedule the actions in Outlook
   

6.  What are Funnel Shapes?

Miller Heiman has defined Funnel Shapes as the total dollars in each position in the Funnel. This leads to a Funnel Shape. The following are examples of Funnel Shapes from Miller Heiman’s Managers Coaching: