What is a sales funnel and how do you build one?

A sales funnel breaks the road from first contact to sale into stages. Some prospects drop out at each one, which is why the shape narrows.

Its real job is not forecasting but making loss visible. "Sales are slow" tells you nothing. "Nine out of ten people who take a meeting disappear at the quote stage" tells you exactly what to fix.

The most common mistake is naming stages after your own activity: "emailed", "called", "quote prepared". That is your work, not the customer's progress.

Name them after what the customer did and the funnel starts telling the truth. These five are more than enough for a small company.

A spreadsheet. Stages across the top, weeks down the side; at the end of each week write how many companies sit in each stage. By week four you have a trend.

CRM software does this counting for you, but buying software does not build the funnel. Software bought before the stages are named simply shows you the wrong number faster.

The one with the largest drop. Instinct says "reach more people", but widening the top of a funnel with a hole in the middle just increases what drains away.

Example: if twenty per cent reply but only ten per cent of those take a meeting, the problem is not the list, it is what you are offering in that first meeting. Sending more emails makes that problem bigger.

For a funnel to work, new companies have to enter every week. This is the most repetitive part of sales and the first thing dropped in a busy week.

That repetition is exactly what Pocufy takes over: it finds companies that fit the description, picks the person who decides and writes the first email. The rest of the funnel stays with you.