The Advanced Funnel: Where Is It Actually Breaking? (Edition #6) + Tool Preview!

Riley Kearl - Senior Marketing & Sales Growth Partner | B2B Funnel Clarity & Pipeline Systems – Turn Traffic ​into Revenue


April 22, 2026


(Conversion Deltas, Benchmarks, Attribution, and The Funnel Clarity Tool begins to take shape.)

Welcome back to Edition 6 of Funnel Clarity Weekly! We've covered a lot of ground over the past five weeks: the basic funnel, the 7 traffic channels, CRO and lead conversion, and then revenue metrics and the 3 outcomes every business is working towards. Now it's time to kick it up a notch.

Six things in this one: the strategy map, the advanced funnel stages, conversion deltas explained, real benchmarks, attribution done simply, and a peek at the Funnel Clarity Tool I've been building (once done it will show you exactly where your funnel is breaking). Let's go.


First, A Quick Map of How Everything Fits Together

One thing that helps before we get into the advanced funnel: understanding which team owns which part of it.

Your growth motion sits above everything. It's the company-level decision about how you primarily grow: Sales Led, Marketing Led, Product Led, or Ecosystem Led. Most companies are a blend but knowing which is primary shapes budget allocation, channel mix, and where your funnel naturally has more or less friction. We'll go deeper on growth motions in Edition 8.

Underneath that, three functions run the funnel:

Three different functions, one funnel. The handoffs between them are where things most often break down. Sales blames marketing for bad leads, marketing blames sales for not closing, and customer success is left dealing with customers who were the wrong fit to begin with.

For now the important thing is that all three are looking at the same funnel and using the same language. That's what the rest of this edition is about.


From Basic to Advanced Funnel

You'll remember from Edition 2 that the basic funnel is simply:

Traffic → Leads → Sales

And in Edition 5 we expanded it slightly into three outcomes: Acquire, Retain, Increase Wallet Share.

The advanced funnel takes all this further by breaking each stage into sub-stages and measuring the conversion delta between each one. Now that you have the context from the previous editions, it should make sense.

Here's the full advanced funnel for B2B SaaS, notice how many steps sit between a first impression and a closed sale. The structure applies to most B2B businesses, the stage names just adapt to your model:

- Interest/Awareness/Impressions

(Traffic %)

- Traffic/Introduce to Website

(Bounce rate %)

- Engaged Traffic

(Trial/prospect rate %)

- Prospects (or MQL)

(Lead rate %)

- Leads (SQL)

(Close rate %)

- Sale/MRR/ARR

(Retention Rate)

If you're in traditional B2B, swap Trial Start for Sales Call or Discovery Call. The structure is the same, the language adapts to your business. The full Funnel Definition Sheet in Edition 8 will map this out across multiple business types.

Every line with a % next to it is a conversion/delta point. Every conversion point is a place your funnel can leak. Most companies track the start and the end and wonder why nothing adds up in the middle. The conversion delta (%) between each stage is where the insight lives.

Different companies will use different language or even add stages and that’s fine; MQL vs Prospect, SQL vs Lead, it doesn't matter as long as your whole team agrees and uses the same terms consistently.


The Tool I'm Building For You

The full and usable version will be in Edition 8 alongside the complete Funnel Definition Sheet, which will map out funnel stages, conversion delta benchmarks, and stage language across multiple business types. Both will be free for all subscribers.

If you want early access or want to discuss your own funnel numbers before then, message me directly.


What is a Conversion Delta (%) and Why Does it Matter?

A conversion delta (or simply a delta) is just a percentage. It's the conversion rate between two adjacent funnel stages. You take the number at one stage, divide it by the number at the stage above, and multiply by 100.

For example: if you had 5,000 website sessions and 2,000 engaged visitors, your engagement delta is 40%. If you then had 400 soft CTA completions from those 2,000 engaged visitors, your soft CTA delta is 20%. Simple maths.

Most companies aren't doing this consistently across every stage. And even fewer are tracking it over time (month to month to spot trends, or year over year to account for seasonality). That's where clarity can disappear and sales/marketing teams lose their way.

Once you track conversion deltas at every stage over time, patterns emerge. You start to see where your funnel consistently leaks. Maybe your traffic > engaged rate is strong but your engaged > lead rate is weak (that's a CTA and offer problem). Maybe your lead > SQL rate is great but your SQL > close rate is poor (that's a qualification or sales process problem). The delta tells you where to look and where to make changes.

I'm building a tool that tracks these conversion deltas and flags when a stage isn't meeting benchmarks, surfacing a warning and a likely problem so you know exactly where to focus. More in Edition 8 when I complete the full build and release it to you for free.

When you also track conversion deltas by channel, the picture gets even clearer. Knowing which channels produce the best engaged traffic, the best leads, and the best close rates is what turns data into actual decisions. And stops you spending money on channels that look busy but don't convert.


What Do Good Conversion Rates Actually Look Like?

This is the question people ask the most, including myself, as it depends on industry, company type, location and more. But I want to give you some real numbers as a starting point, keep in mind the other factors mentioned above when reviewing. Based on industry research for small to mid-sized B2B SaaS companies ($10M–$100M ARR):

Run those numbers together and your overall Traffic  > Sale (overall rate) sits somewhere around 0.09–0.14%. That sounds tiny and it is, but it's normal. Most companies are operating right in that range without realising it, which is exactly why tracking each stage separately matters more than obsessing over the overall number.

One thing worth noting: SEO traffic tends to convert to leads at around 2.1% (which is higher than the overall average of 1.1–1.4%) … which is another reason to invest in organic search for the long term rather than relying on paid.

Use these as a reference point, not a target. Your funnel is your funnel. The goal is to track your own conversion deltas over time, understand where you sit today, and watch what improves as you make changes. The Funnel Clarity Tool will include benchmarks across multiple business types so you can see exactly how you compare.


Attribution: What it Actually Looks Like In The Real World

Attribution is the practice of assigning credit to the channels, campaigns, and touchpoints that contributed to a sale. In theory it's simple. In practice it's one of the messiest things in marketing.

Here's why: the average B2B buyer has dozens of touchpoints before they buy. They might find you through a Google search, come back three weeks later from a LinkedIn post, download a guide, go quiet for two months, and then book a call after seeing you speak at an event. Which of those gets the credit?

The honest answer is all of them. But most CRM and analytics tools aren't set up to capture that full picture, so many companies end up giving credit to either the first touch (how did they first find us?) or the last touch (what did they click right before they converted?). Both are incomplete.

Here's what I actually recommend for most B2B teams who aren't running a full multi-touch attribution model:

Start with source tracking. Make sure every lead in your CRM has a source attached. Where did they come from? Paid, SEO, direct, referral, social, email, event? Even if it's imperfect this gives you directional data. Automate source tracking where you can but you might need to start with some manual efforts.

Track lead source all the way to revenue. Not just "we got a lead from LinkedIn" but "the leads from LinkedIn closed at X% with an average deal size of Y." That's the data that actually helps you make budget decisions.

Use UTM parameters consistently. If you're running any paid or email campaigns and you don't have UTMs on every link, you're flying blind. Set this up and you'll immediately have much better data on what's driving traffic and leads.

Accept that attribution will always be imperfect. The goal isn't a perfect model. It's enough clarity to make better decisions. Even rough source data is infinitely better than none.

A weak attribution setup is a common reason teams double down on the wrong channels. They think paid is their best lead source because that's what the last-click report shows, but when you dig into which leads actually closed, SEO, GEO, and referrals (or other channels) might be the real winners.


Founder Test: Do you Know your Deltas?

Without digging too deep, can you answer each of these questions in around 5 minutes?

If you can answer all four quickly, your funnel has good visibility. If you're drawing a blank on any of them, that's where to start.


Two questions for the comments before I go:

Which stage of your funnel feels most invisible right now … Traffic, Leads, or Sales?

And what would you like to see in the Funnel Clarity Tool? It's still under construction so you can have some input here.

Next up is Edition 7: AI and GEO, and how generative search is changing the way buyers discover and evaluate your product. It's the same shift we saw with mobile back in 2015 and most companies are making the same mistake of moving too slowly.

Edition 8 is the full release: the Funnel Definition Sheet + the interactive Funnel Clarity Tool. Both free for subscribers, so make sure you're subscribed if you aren't already.

Byeeeee :)

Riley

Read Edition #7 on LinkedIn