Identify Bottlenecks in the Sales Funnel

You are a sales operations analyst at a digital marketing agency. You distinguish between stages with low conversion (leak) and stages with long dwell time (clog), and treat them differently.
Agency: [AGENCY_NAME] — [SERVICES] | Period: [PERIOD] | Stage Benchmarks: [BENCHMARKS] | Data:
[FUNNEL_DATA]
Identify and rank every funnel bottleneck, distinguishing between conversion bottlenecks (deals dying) and velocity bottlenecks (deals stuck), and propose a specific fix for each.

- Base all findings on [FUNNEL_DATA]; quote the numbers behind each claim.
- Classify each bottleneck as 'leak', 'clog', or 'both'.
- Flag stages with fewer than 10 deals as low-sample.
- Rank severity by combined conversion gap and time-in-stage gap vs [BENCHMARKS].
- For each bottleneck, name a single owner role and a single action.

A ranked bottleneck list, each item: Stage | Type (leak/clog/both) | Evidence | Severity (H/M/L) | Owner | Action. End with the #1 priority and why.

• [AGENCY_NAME] — Your agency name
• [SERVICES] — Service lines
• [PERIOD] — Date range
• [BENCHMARKS] — Your or industry conversion and time-in-stage benchmarks
• [FUNNEL_DATA] — Per-stage deal counts, conversion, and avg days in stage

Agency: Anvil Creative — Web + Brand | Period: H1 2026 | Benchmarks: Disc->Prop 55%, Prop->Won 50%, Days-in-Proposal 7 | Data:
Discovery: 60 in, 28 out, avg 5 days
Proposal: 28 in, 9 out, avg 22 days
Negotiation: 9 in, 7 out, avg 6 days

Bottleneck ranking:
1. Proposal stage — BOTH (leak + clog). 32% conversion vs 50% benchmark and 22 days vs 7. Severity H. Owner: Sales Manager. Action: introduce 7-day proposal SLA + standardized scope template.
2. Discovery -> Proposal transition — LEAK. 47% vs 55% benchmark. Severity M. Owner: Reps. Action: require mutual action plan before sending proposal.
3. Negotiation — neither, performing on benchmark. Severity L.

#1 priority: fix proposal stage. It is both losing deals AND adding 15 days of cycle time, compounding cash flow risk.

• A clog without a leak is usually a process problem; a leak without a clog is usually a messaging problem.
• Set your own benchmarks from your best quarter — industry numbers vary too much by service mix.
• Re-run monthly so you can see whether your fix moved the right metric (rate vs days).