Your Pipeline Isn’t Broken. Your Process Is.
For SaaS founders, GTM leaders, and CFOs who want revenue that actually ships and sticks.
1) Stop guessing from dashboards
Charts don’t close deals. People do.
Before you “optimize the funnel,” go sit with the humans.
Do this next week:
Shadow 3 SDR call blocks, 3 AE discovery calls, 2 late-stage deal reviews.
Join 2 onboarding calls, 2 support escalations, 1 QBR.
Ask the same five questions in every room:
Where does work slow down, exactly?
What info is missing when you need it?
What step feels pointless?
What do you re-type or re-do every day?
If you had one button to fix your job, what would it do?
You will find the truth in the seat, not in the slide.
2) Run an Ops-First diagnostic
Think fewer tools, more clarity.
Map these, end to end:
Stage definitions: entry and exit criteria that are binary.
Speed-to-lead: first touch within 5 minutes. The delta here is wild. Companies that respond within minutes see huge gains in contact and qualification rates. ResearchGate+1
Handoffs: SDR → AE, AE → Solutions, AE → Onboarding, Onboarding → CSM. Each needs an SLA, owner, and checklist.
Time-to-value: how fast a customer hits the first “aha” that matters to billing and retention.
Mutual action plans: every deal over a threshold has a dated plan with the buyer’s tasks and yours.
Non-decision root causes: buyers say B2B purchases are complex. Your job is to remove friction. Gartner
3) The 14-day Ops Sprint
A fast, all-hands push that surfaces blockers and kills them.
Day 1–2: Fieldwork
Shadow, interview, listen. Pull 20 real examples of stuck deals or delayed go-lives.
Day 3–4: Trace the work
Whiteboard the real process for lead → live. Note every tool touch, handoff, and rework loop.
Day 5: Decide the fixes
Pick the top 5 friction points by revenue impact. Assign an owner and a measurable outcome for each.
Day 6–10: Ship
One fix per friction point:
Speed-to-lead: routing rules cleaned up, alerts tightened, coverage schedule posted.
Discovery quality: 7-question script and call scorecard.
Handoffs: one-page checklist in the CRM with required fields.
Onboarding: standard kickoff deck and “Week 1” playbook.
Data hygiene: required fields + validation rules at stage change.
Day 11–13: Prove it
Re-run the same 20 examples through the new flow. Time each step. Compare.
Day 14: Lock cadence
Daily 15-minute standup for owners.
Weekly funnel review by stage and SLA, not “feelings.”
Monthly tear-down of one full customer journey, end to end.
4) Metrics that matter
If your team can't influence it this week, don’t lead with it.
Speed-to-lead: median minutes from form fill to human touch. Target single digits. Faster responses massively increase contact and qualification rates. ResearchGate+1
Stage-to-stage conversion: by segment and source. Name the worst stage. Fix that first.
Aging by stage: 75th percentile days. Anything above gets an auto-review.
Handoff SLA hit rate: on time and complete.
Time-to-first-value: days to first KPI the buyer cares about.
Go-live in 30/60/90: percent of closed-won that are billing by each cutoff.
No-decision rate: percentage of advanced opps that die without a choice. Simplify the buying path. Most buyers find the process complex and prefer low-effort, guided journeys. Gartner+1
5) Tooling: multipliers, not crutches
Yes, we love Salesloft, Clay, Granola, and friends. Use them to remove manual sludge, not to hide from broken ops.
Rules:
One owner per tool. One SOP. One success metric.
30-day cut or keep review. Shelfware gets cut.
Meeting notes and follow-ups auto-sync to the CRM so reps sell, not type. Tools like Granola help here and are getting heavy adoption among operators. Business Insider+1
6) Make it in-person
Fly in. Sit next to the SDR who covers East Coast mornings. Walk the onboarding queue with the IMs. Join a support shift.
Two days on the floor will beat two months of slide reviews. Culture shifts when leaders show up and fix things with the team.
7) What “good” feels like
Leads get a human in minutes, not hours. Contact and qualification rates jump. InsideSales
Fewer “where is this” Slacks. Clear owners, clean handoffs.
Deals move with dated next steps. No-decision drops. Buyers feel guided in a complex journey. Gartner
Go-lives happen faster. Revenue shows up sooner. Finance smiles.
8) How we run this at Canopy
We come in for 4–6 weeks, shoulder-to-shoulder with your team:
Week 1: fieldwork and mapping.
Weeks 2–3: fix the top 5 friction points.
Weeks 4–5: instrument the metrics, build the dashboards, set the cadences.
Week 6: transfer ownership and train. You keep the machine.
Bottom line: Your pipeline isn’t starving. It’s clogged. Don’t buy more top-of-funnel until you fix the flow. Get everyone in the room, find the friction, squash it, repeat. That’s how revenue scales.
