You’ve got plenty of leads—maybe too many, in fact. You’ve got plenty of potential sales calls and appointments. But when it comes to looking at the numbers—to comparing your conversions against the number of conversions you think you should have—then it becomes a different story.

Welcome to the sales funnel conundrum, when the potential doesn’t match the reality and you start to question what’s going on. Well, in answer to that: There could be a lot of things going on, and it could be that some of them relate to problems in your sales funnel.

The sales funnel is more often than not the place to start, and that’s because it’s a great way to pick apart your process and to find out what you’re doing and where customers are getting stuck. It has definable points, including top, middle, and bottom.

As I’ve stated before, to have a robust sales and marketing alignment strategy you must address three key pillars – DATA, PROCESS, and COMMUNICATION. The graphic below will help you understand what’s happening and how to do a deep dive into your sales process.