Where do people drop off, and how long does each step take?
The Funnel analysis follows people rather than deals, so it covers everything that happens before a deal exists — which is where most of the loss usually is. It shows how many reached each stage, how many moved on, how long that took, who stops at the worst step, and how fast sales picks up what marketing hands over. The deal-side version of the same question sits on Read the Executive Read for a connected tool, under the buyer’s journey.
Before you start
Open Analysis, choose your tool, and click Funnel. It reads records already synced into your workspace, so a sync is what moves the figures.
The stages, their order and their names come from your own lifecycle picklist, so a custom stage appears where you placed it. Values named “Other” are not treated as a step. Anything found on your records that the picklist does not list goes last, most common first.
Two modes, and which one you are in
The card headed How your leads move opens with one of two sentences, and the difference decides what the rest of the tab can say. The word in that title is your business profile’s word for a person, so it reads How your enquiries move on a services profile.
- “Each row is a stage. The bar shows how many people reached it…” — your records carry the date a person entered each stage. Conversion between stages, the time each step takes, the biggest loss, the hand-off and the stuck counts all appear.
- “Where people sit today. Movement between stages cannot be measured until the tool records the date a person enters each stage.” — you get where people sit now and nothing about movement, and the tab never infers a conversion rate from that.
Which tools give the dated reading today
MarqIQ reads stage-entry dates from HubSpot’s Date entered properties. Other tools stamp stage dates in fields of their own naming, and reading those as stage dates is not built yet — so those workspaces get the second reading. Where MarqIQ can see date fields that look like stage dates on your records, it names them in What to do next and says that nothing new has to be built on your side.
What “reached a stage” means
Someone has reached a stage when they carry a date for it, or a date for any later stage, or sit in a later stage today. People skip steps, and someone who became a customer did pass the point where a lead becomes qualified, whether or not anyone recorded it.
Skips are counted rather than hidden. Where somebody got past a stage with no date for it, the line under that stage says so: “412 went past without ever being marked Marketing Qualified Lead”. A qualification step most of your buyers never pass through is itself the finding, and What to do next raises it once 40% or more of the people who got past a middle stage skipped it, on a base of at least 30.
The ladder, line by line
Each stage gets a bar and a set of figures. Under it, in smaller type, sits the step to the next stage.
| What the line says | What it is measured on |
|---|---|
| “1,402 reached this stage” | Everyone read who has a date for it, a date for a later stage, or sits in a later stage today |
| “318 here now” | People whose current stage is this one. Not the same as reached, and much smaller. It appears only when at least one person is sitting there |
| “47 stuck over 90 days” | People sitting here longer than twice the typical time it takes to leave this stage, and never less than 30 days. The threshold is printed in the line, so the 90 is the workspace’s own figure and not a fixed one |
| “23% move on to Sales Qualified Lead” | Of those who reached this stage, the share who reached the next. Marked “(too few people to rely on)” when fewer than 30 reached this stage |
| “typically 12 days, and within 40 days for three in four” | The middle value across people carrying a date for both stages, so one two-year deal does not distort it. Shown only from ten such people |
Above the ladder, the headline names the step where you lose the most people and the slowest step, and a line under it gives the end-to-end rate from the first stage to the last with its counts and the typical time.
Who stops at your biggest leak
The worst step is the one that loses the most people in absolute numbers, chosen among steps at least 30 people reached. The card then splits the people at that step by their own attributes, in two columns: Moving on less often and Moving on more often.
The attributes are your lead source, your latest source, industry, country, and seniority worked out from the job title. Each line prints the value, how it compares with the average, and the two counts behind the rate.
- A group is shown only with at least 30 people in it.
- The difference from the average has to be larger than chance could explain, at 95% confidence, with the group’s interval clear of the overall rate.
- It also has to be large enough to act on: a group whose rate lands between 0.8 and 1.25 times the average is dropped even when the difference is real. Eight groups are shown in all, split across the two columns.
- Where nothing clears those bars on one side, that column says so rather than showing a thin list.
Take care
A group moving on less often is not automatically a targeting problem. The card says which two readings are open: either those are the wrong people, or that step is failing them. Check what you do differently for the group on the other side before you cut anything.
When marketing hands over to sales
The hand-off stage is the marketing-qualified or sales-qualified stage, whichever your workspace stamps a date for. The card measures from that date to the first recorded sales outreach, and needs at least ten people handed over.
- Typical wait for first contact — the middle value, so one slow case does not distort it.
- Contacted within a day — measured on the same denominator as Never contacted, with its two counts printed beneath.
- Never contacted — someone with no recorded sales touch counts here only once seven days have passed since the hand-off, so a hand-off from this morning is not held against anyone. The denominator is everyone who was contacted plus everyone handed over at least seven days ago, and the screen prints both counts with “handed over at least a week ago” beside them.
- Owners are listed only with at least ten people handed to them, twelve owners at most, slowest first.
Sales already in touch before the hand-off counts as an immediate pick-up rather than as a negative wait. What to do next raises the hand-off once a tenth or more of the people handed over were never contacted, and prints that as demand already paid for and left on the table.
Note
The first sales touch is read from HubSpot’s own first-outreach and first-engagement date properties. On a workspace with neither, this card does not appear.
Stuck, skipped and backwards
Three counts that describe the funnel as it stands rather than how it flows, each raised in What to do next when it is worth acting on.
- Stuck — raised from ten people sitting in a stage beyond twice its typical time, with the threshold in days printed in the sentence.
- Skipped — raised when 40% or more of the people who got past a middle stage were never recorded at it.
- Backwards — raised from ten people whose current stage is earlier than one they had already reached. Stages should only move forward, so something is pushing them back; Is each field being used for what it is for? names what.
What the figures are measured on
- Up to 80,000 people are read. Above that the read is an even spread across your whole database rather than the newest records, and the sentence under the headline prints the sample against the population.
- Every rate on the tab carries its own denominator, and they differ from line to line: the reached count at one stage is not the reached count at the next.
- Times between stages are medians across people carrying a date for both, never averages.
- The Created range above the tabs scopes this analysis to people created in that period.
What it will not do
- It changes nothing in your tool.
- It never infers movement from where people sit today. With no stage dates it says what is missing and stops.
- It quotes no industry benchmark. Every comparison is with your own average.
- It names no group on fewer than 30 people.
If it did not work
The tab shows where people sit and no conversion rates
Why: Your records carry no stage-entry dates that MarqIQ reads, so the card can only show where people sit today.
Fix: Read What to do next: where you already hold date fields that look like stage dates, it names them. Otherwise the fix is a date field per stage, stamped by an automation at the moment the stage changes. HubSpot does this by itself; other tools need that one automation.
A stage you use is missing from the ladder
Why: No person read carries that stage today or a date for it, or the value is named “Other”, which is not treated as a step.
Fix: Check the stage exists on your lifecycle picklist and that records carry it. Clearing the Created filter usually brings back a stage that only older records used.
A step shows “(too few people to rely on)”
Why: Fewer than 30 people reached that stage inside the population being read.
Fix: Widen the Created range. The rate is still shown, so you can read it, and the tag tells you not to quote it.
There is no hand-off card
Why: No stage is stamped as the marketing- or sales-qualified hand-off, fewer than ten people were handed over, or no first sales touch is recorded on any record.
Fix: Confirm your hand-off stage stamps a date, and that the first-outreach date is being filled. Without a recorded first touch there is nothing to measure the wait against.
Both segment columns say nothing stands out
Why: No attribute value has 30 people at that step with a difference from the average that is both real at 95% confidence and at least a fifth away from it.
Fix: Widen the range. Where the attributes themselves are thinly filled, fix that first: an industry field filled on a tenth of records cannot explain a leak.
The numbers disagree with the stage counts in your tool
Why: MarqIQ counts someone as having reached a stage when they have a date for it or for any later one; your tool’s report probably counts people sitting in the stage now.
Fix: Compare the “here now” figure with your tool’s count, not the “reached this stage” figure. The two answer different questions, and both sit on the same line.
Next steps
Related articles
Was this article helpful?