--- name: stage-conversion-analysis description: "How many deals enter each funnel stage and how many advance — per-stage conversion, rolled yield from first stage to closed-won, and exactly which stage is losing the most deals. Use when: You can pull real per-stage counts from the CRM — how many deals entered a stage and how many advanced to the next one — for a bounded segment, not the whole blended pipeline. You want to know which specific stage is losing the most deals, not just an overall win rate. Not for: You only have an overall win rate with no stage-level breakdown — that's a start, but it can't tell you which stage to fix. You want time-based findings — lead time, flow efficiency, which stage is capping throughput — that's the sales funnel value stream map, the funnel flow efficiency calculator, or the bottleneck analysis. The pipeline segment blends deal types with genuinely different natural conversion patterns — scope down to one comparable segment first, same discipline as every other VSM-family artifact." --- # Stage conversion analysis How many deals enter each funnel stage and how many advance — per-stage conversion, rolled yield from first stage to closed-won, and exactly which stage is losing the most deals. Family: Value stream mapping · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is A deal that doesn't advance out of a funnel stage is a defect the same way a unit failing inspection is — stage conversion is first-pass yield applied to a sales pipeline. This tool asks for one thing per stage: how many deals entered, how many advanced. From that it computes each stage's conversion rate, the rolled yield from first stage to closed-won (which is always lower than any single stage's rate, since losses compound), and names the single weakest stage. ## When to use it Use it when: - You can pull real per-stage counts from the CRM — how many deals entered a stage and how many advanced to the next one — for a bounded segment, not the whole blended pipeline. - You want to know which specific stage is losing the most deals, not just an overall win rate. - You want a rolled conversion figure that reflects the real compounding loss across every stage, not an average of each stage's rate. Not when: - You only have an overall win rate with no stage-level breakdown — that's a start, but it can't tell you which stage to fix. - You want time-based findings — lead time, flow efficiency, which stage is capping throughput — that's the sales funnel value stream map, the funnel flow efficiency calculator, or the bottleneck analysis. - The pipeline segment blends deal types with genuinely different natural conversion patterns — scope down to one comparable segment first, same discipline as every other VSM-family artifact. ## How to fill it in - **scope** — Which deal source or segment, which start and end stage — typically SQL to closed-won/lost. Keep it to one comparable segment; a blended pipeline produces a conversion number that describes neither. - **stages** — List each stage transition in order with how many deals entered it and how many advanced. Pull real counts from CRM stage-history, not a gut-sense estimate of 'about half fall through.' - **rolledYield** — Computed for you: each stage's conversion rate, the rolled yield from first stage to closed-won, and which single stage is the weakest link — nothing to enter here. - **narrative** — Drafted from the weakest-stage finding and your observation notes — what reps or RevOps have actually seen about why that specific stage is losing deals. - **countermeasures** — What will you do about the weakest stage, ranked by impact and effort, owned and dated? A countermeasure aimed at a stage the data doesn't name as weakest is a coaching failure mode, not a real action. ## What good looks like The example below is a five-stage outbound funnel's stage conversion: real per-stage deal counts, a rolled yield figure with the arithmetic shown, the weakest transition named with its deal loss, and a countermeasure that traces directly to that finding. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/stage-conversion-analysis ## Common mistakes - **Averaging each stage's conversion rate instead of computing the rolled (compounding) yield.** — A funnel with five stages each converting at 75% doesn't roll to 75% overall — it rolls to about 24%. Averaging badly overstates how many deals actually make it from first stage to closed-won. - **Estimating stage counts from memory instead of pulling real CRM stage-history.** — Reps' recall skews toward memorable deals, not typical ones — the CRM's actual stage-transition counts are the ground truth here, same as every other data-driven artifact in this catalogue. - **Treating every stage below 100% conversion as equally worth fixing.** — Same vital-few discipline as the rest of this catalogue — one weakest stage named with conviction, not a list of every stage with some loss. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Sales funnel value stream map** (`sales-funnel-map`) — The same stage-level thinking, applied with time data instead of counts — useful together when a stage is both losing deals and taking too long. Downstream: - **Deal A3 — win-rate root cause analysis** (`deal-a3`) — Once the weakest stage is named, a deal A3 is where you'd run root cause analysis on why that specific stage is losing deals, if it isn't already obvious. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a stage's loss is a pattern worth acting on now or a one-quarter anomaly - Committing to which countermeasure to act on first Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting the narrative from rep/RevOps observation notes and the weakest-stage finding - Pressure-testing whether a proposed countermeasure actually addresses the named weakest stage Drudgery — automated: - Computing every stage's conversion rate and the rolled yield, with the arithmetic shown - Identifying the weakest stage from stage data - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Stage conversion analysis is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/stage-conversion-analysis.