Sales Funnel Examples: Trace One Cohort Through Its Stages

Define the cohort and counting rules

Fictional cohort: 120 unique workshop enquiries received in January. Follow only those enquiries through March 31. Count each enquiry once per stage reached; every later stage is a subset of the previous one. In this exercise, consultation means a completed meeting, proposal means a quote actually sent and purchase means a confirmed paid booking.

Salesforce describes a funnel as progress toward purchase and notes that stages vary. The four stage labels here belong to this exercise, not a universal model. Do not add February’s new enquiries to January’s cohort.

Read the completed funnel

Describe non-progression without inventing a reason

Forty-eight enquiries did not reach a completed consultation by the cutoff. Thirty-six consultation enquiries did not reach a proposal, and eighteen proposal enquiries did not reach a paid booking. Those are counts of stage non-progression at the observation date, not automatically losses.

The fixture does not say whether the remaining enquiries declined, were unsuitable, had not replied or were still considering dates. Ask for status evidence before labeling the gap “poor follow-up” or “price objections.” An enquiry can remain open when the observation window ends.

Spot a mixed-cohort calculation

A separate March activity report lists 25 bookings, including 7 from enquiries received before January. Dividing 25 by January’s 120 would mix populations. The correct numerator for this supplied cohort remains 18; the separate activity report answers a different question.

If you want a March operational count, report 25 March bookings with its own definition. If you want January-cohort conversion, preserve the January enquiry population and cutoff. Both can be useful, but their labels must make the distinction visible.

Choose an investigation question from the funnel

A useful next question is: “What statuses and elapsed times account for the 48 enquiries without a completed consultation?” It seeks information that the chart lacks. Comparing conversion across cohorts also requires the same stage definitions and a comparable follow-up window.

Practice task: five more of these original enquiries book after March 31. Keep the March 31 result at 15% and report the later snapshot separately: 23÷120≈19.17%. Replacing an earlier result silently would hide that the cohort was observed for longer.