Sales process optimization: find the leak, fix one step

Your sales process is the set of steps a deal goes through, from first contact to signed. Optimising it means finding the step where most deals stop, and changing that step until fewer do.

Big companies have a revenue operations team for this. On a team of 3 to 30, it's you, a spreadsheet and an afternoon a month. That's enough, as long as you work on one step at a time.

Start with last month. Write down your steps and count how many deals, calls or people reached each one. Keep the steps you already use. For most teams it's something like this:

1. Leads contacted
2. Conversations, where you reached a person
3. First meetings booked
4. Proposals or quotes sent
5. Deals won

Then work out the rate for each step: the number that reached the next step, divided by the number at this one, which is the step's conversion ratio. Five steps give you four rates.

There's no right number of steps. What matters is that every rep counts the same ones, and that each step has an entry rule you can check: "a meeting is in the calendar", not "they sounded keen".

If your steps aren't written down anywhere, or each rep uses different ones, fix that first and agree an entry rule for each pipeline stage.

When most of your conversations happen on WhatsApp, the app can hold the count for you. WhatsApp's help page on lists says you can create custom lists to sort chats into your own categories. Make one list per step, add each chat to the list for the step it has reached, and on the first of the month count the chats in each.

The lowest rate isn't always the leak, because some steps are always low: cold outreach to conversations will nearly always be the smallest number on the page, and that's normal.

Look for the step that's worse than it should be. Two comparisons tell you:

• Against your own past. Which rate dropped compared with last quarter?
• Against your best rep. Where is the gap between your best rep and the rest of the team widest?

A step that's fallen, or where one rep does far better than the others, is a step you can fix. Your best rep is doing something there that the others aren't.

Time can leak too. A deal that sits at one step for weeks is a leak even if it closes in the end. Check your sales cycle length step by step, and look for where deals wait longest.

A leak early in the process costs you every step after it. If the clinic team above got conversations to meetings back to last quarter's rate, the same 160 conversations would book 88 meetings instead of 64. At the same rates after that, 88 meetings make 55 proposals, and those make 16 or 17 deals instead of 12, from exactly the calls they already made.

That's why you optimise before you push for more activity. More calls pour more leads into a leaky step, while fixing the step makes every call the team already makes worth more, and the gain carries down to every step below it.

It also makes the forecast honest. When you know each step's rate, 40 proposals out means a number of deals you can name in advance, not a hope.

You don't need a dashboard of 30 numbers. These six, counted the same way every month, tell you where to look:

Read them together. A change that lifts the rate at one step and shrinks the average deal hasn't fixed anything, it's moved the problem. Work out win rate from deals that finished in the month, and leave the open ones out.

When a step leaks, the reflex is to add something: a new tool, a sign-off, another meeting. Try taking something away first. Most leaks come from a step that makes it harder for the buyer or the rep to move forward.

Things teams often find they can cut:

• The "let me send you some info first" email before a meeting is booked.
• A second discovery call that repeats the first.
• Manager sign-off on every small discount, which leaves a quote waiting for two days.
• A form reps fill in after each call that nobody reads.
• A weekly pipeline meeting that reads the CRM aloud.

Add a tool when the fix needs something you can't do by hand, such as reminders that have to go out on a certain day. Buy it after you've proved the change works on paper.

What to hand to software, and what to keep

Change one step. Leave everything else alone. Then run it for a full month.

A week is too short. A slow week, a holiday or one big deal will swamp the difference. Two changes at once means you won't know which one worked, or whether one helped while the other hurt.

At the end of the month, count the same steps in the same way and put the two months side by side. Keep the change if the rate at that step went up and the steps after it didn't fall. If nothing moved, drop it and try the next idea for the same step. If the rate went up, move on to the next leak.

Keep a short log: the month, the step, what you changed and what happened. After six months you'll have a record of what works on your team, which is worth more than any benchmark from another company.

A process change only works if reps do it when nobody's watching. Most changes die in the second week.

• Show them the counts. Reps take a change more seriously when they can see the step where their deals are stopping.
• Let the best rep explain it. "Here's what I say at the end of a call" lands better from a peer than from you.
• Make the new way the easy way. Put the two-times line in the call script and the booking link in their email signature.
• Check it every week for the month. One line in the team meeting: how many conversations ended with a meeting booked?
• Coach the rep, not the team. If one rep's rate hasn't moved by week three, listen to their calls in your next 1:1.
• Don't change it again mid-month, even if week one looks bad. You'll undo the test.

The easy way can live in the tools reps already use. On WhatsApp, save the two-times line as a quick reply. The Business app keeps up to 50 of them, and typing "/" in a chat brings up the list, so a rep can change a word before sending. For the booking link, a Google Calendar appointment schedule gives each rep a booking page, and with "Check calendars for availability" switched on it avoids times they're already busy. Set it up on a computer, because the Calendar app on Android and iPhone can't create one.

A process you fixed in March leaks somewhere else by June, because buyers change and a new lead source brings different people. Once the first leak is fixed, the next-lowest step becomes the leak. That's normal, and you keep moving down the list.

Four habits keep it working:

• Recount every month, the same steps the same way, even when you aren't testing anything. It takes an afternoon.
• Re-check every step when something outside changes: a price rise, a new product, a new lead source, a rep leaving.
• Teach new reps from the log: the steps, the entry rule for each, and the changes that worked. They shouldn't have to learn it by watching.
• Ask each rep once a quarter which step feels hardest, then check their answer against the counts.

If follow-up is the step that keeps leaking, the sales follow-up process covers the dates, the messages and who chases what.

• Rewriting the whole process at once. You can't tell what helped, and reps stop following any of it.
• Comparing against an industry average. Another company's funnel has different buyers, prices and reps.
• Fixing the last step first because it's closest to revenue. Fix the step that leaks, wherever it is.
• Counting from memory. If calls and meetings aren't logged, the counts are guesses, and so is the fix.

• WhatsApp Help Center, About lists, read 26 October 2026
• WhatsApp Help Center, How to use quick replies, read 26 October 2026
• Google Calendar Help, Create an appointment schedule, read 26 October 2026