Sales Funnel Template: Six Stages and the Exit Criterion for Each
The exit criteria column carries all the value in a funnel template and is the one left blank. Six stages, what belongs in each, and the sizing arithmetic.
A sales funnel template records the stages a deal passes through, the count in each, and an exit criterion for every stage. The criteria column decides whether the document is useful: a criterion two people would judge the same way makes the counts comparable, and one phrased as a seller feeling does not.
Key takeaways
- An exit criterion works when someone outside the deal, reading only the record, could agree it was met without asking the rep what they thought.
- Tightening the qualified definition to confirmed in writing by the buyer shrinks the qualified count immediately, and the shrink is the point.
- Source, segment, deal size and days in stage are fields on a deal, never stages, because modelling an attribute as a stage multiplies rows without adding information.
- Write the denominator beside every conversion rate: measuring against meetings booked instead of meetings held removes no-shows and makes a deteriorating funnel look stable.
Reviewed and updated August 16, 2026
Two completely different products answer to the phrase sales funnel template, and picking up the wrong one costs a week. One is a landing-page builder: a set of designed pages for a lead magnet, a webinar and a checkout, aimed at someone selling a course. The other is a spreadsheet with stages down the left and numbers across the top, aimed at someone trying to work out why their pipeline keeps producing a forecast that turns out to be wrong.
This page is about the second one. It contains the template, what belongs in each field, and the sizing arithmetic that makes the difference between a funnel that describes what happened and one that tells you what to change.
What the template has to do
A funnel template records two things: the stages a deal passes through, and how many deals sit in and pass through each one. The recording is the easy half. The half that decides whether the document is worth keeping is whether the stage boundaries are defined tightly enough that two people would place the same deal in the same stage.
That is a higher bar than it sounds. Given a stage called Qualified with no definition attached, one rep counts a discovery call that went well, another counts a written confirmation of budget and timing, and the two pipelines they produce cannot be added together. The template below carries a definition column for exactly that reason, and the definition column is the one that gets left blank.
Which stages earn a place in the first place is a separate question with a longer answer, covered in sales pipeline stages. The template here assumes that decision has been made and concerns itself with recording it in a form the team can operate.
The template
Six stages, four columns. Copy it into a sheet.
SALES FUNNEL: <team or motion> Period: ........ Owner: ........
STAGE EXIT CRITERION (what must be true to leave) COUNT CONV %
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Contacted A message was delivered to a verified address ..... .....
2 Engaged They replied with something other than no ..... .....
3 Meeting held The meeting happened, both parties attended ..... .....
4 Qualified Need, timing and decision process confirmed
in writing by them, not inferred by us ..... .....
5 Proposed A priced proposal has been sent and acknowledged ..... .....
6 Closed won Signed ..... .....
NOT STAGES (record as fields on the deal):
Source ...... Segment ...... Deal size ...... Days in current stage ......
TOP-OF-FUNNEL REQUIREMENT
Target closed won per month: ......
Implied stage-1 volume per month: ...... (see arithmetic below)
The exit criteria are the content. Everything else is bookkeeping, and a template that ships with the criteria column empty will come back with it empty.
Writing an exit criterion that survives two people
Every criterion above is phrased as something that either happened or did not, and that is deliberate. The test worth applying: could a person outside the deal, reading only the record, agree the criterion was met without asking the rep what they thought?
Three patterns fail that test consistently. Criteria phrased as seller feelings ("they seem interested"). Criteria phrased as seller activity ("proposal sent") where the buyer did nothing, which is why stage five above requires acknowledgement rather than sending. And criteria that describe a conclusion the seller drew ("budget confirmed") rather than the evidence for it, which is why stage four specifies in writing by them.
Stage four is where most funnels lose their honesty, and it is worth being blunt about the cost of tightening it. Applying that definition will shrink the qualified count immediately, and the shrink is the point: those deals were always in that condition, and the funnel was simply recording an opinion about them.
- Interested
- Meeting went well
- Qualified
- Proposal sent
- Verbal yes
- Nearly there
- Replied with something other than no
- Meeting happened and both parties attended
- Need, timing and process confirmed in writing by them
- Priced proposal sent and acknowledged
- Countersigned contract on file
- Nothing: the stage was deleted
What is a field, not a stage
The commonest way a funnel template bloats is by turning attributes into stages. Source becomes three stages because outbound, inbound and referral deals are tracked separately. Deal size becomes two more because enterprise deals get their own path.
Each of those is an attribute of a deal, not a step it passes through, and modelling it as a stage multiplies the rows without adding information. Keep them as fields and the same six stages describe every deal, which means the conversion rates can be compared across segments instead of living in parallel funnels nobody reconciles.
Days in current stage belongs in the same list, and it is the most useful field on the sheet. A count tells you how many deals are sitting in a stage. Time in stage tells you which of them have stopped moving, and a deal that has not moved in six weeks is closer to lost than the count suggests.
Sizing the top, with the arithmetic shown
The bottom two lines of the template exist because a funnel document that records only what happened cannot tell you whether the plan is possible. The following figures are invented for illustration and describe no real campaign.
Start from a target of four closed-won deals a month. Working upward with illustrative rates: if half of proposals close, that needs eight proposals. If two thirds of qualified deals reach a proposal, that needs twelve qualified. If half of held meetings qualify under the stage-four definition above, that needs twenty-four meetings held. If one in three engaged replies becomes a held meeting, that needs seventy-two engaged replies. And if two in a hundred contacted companies reply, that needs about 3,600 companies contacted in the month.
Two useful things fall out of that chain, both invented in the numbers and real in the shape. The first is that the top-of-funnel requirement is usually an order of magnitude larger than people expect, and it is the stage-one number that decides whether the target is achievable at all. The second is that the leverage is not evenly spread: improving the reply rate from two percent to three percent removes a third of the required volume, while improving the close rate by the same relative amount changes the top of the funnel by far less, because it sits below every other multiplier.
stage 1, the number the target actually depends on
replied with something other than no
both parties attended
confirmed in writing by them
sent and acknowledged
the target this was worked back from
The denominator that flatters
One arithmetic trap is worth naming because it survives every template review. A conversion rate needs both a numerator and a denominator, and the denominator is where funnels get quietly generous.
Measuring stage-three conversion against meetings booked rather than meetings held removes every no-show from the calculation and makes the number look better while describing less. Measuring qualified rate against deals that reached stage two rather than against everyone contacted does the same thing one level up. Neither is dishonest by intent, and both make a funnel that is deteriorating look stable.
Write the denominator into the sheet beside each percentage. The discipline is covered further in the SaaS sales funnel guide, which deals with the additional complication of two paths converging into one funnel, and in the agency sales funnel guide for the case where churn means the funnel has to refill before it grows.
Where outbound enters
Stage one in the template is contacted, which assumes a list exists and that messages are arriving. Both assumptions fail quietly and they fail in ways the funnel cannot distinguish from a copy problem: a deliverability fault and a bad list both show up as a low stage-one to stage-two conversion, and rewriting the message fixes neither.
Before concluding that the top of the funnel needs better copy, confirm that the addresses are verified and the sending is landing. When those hold and the rate is still low, the segment definition is the next thing to examine rather than the wording, because a good message to the wrong company performs like a bad message. The ideal customer profile guide covers tightening that definition with the count arithmetic shown.
If building the list and running stage one is the part you would rather hand to someone else, see what a campaign looks like.
What the template cannot tell you
A funnel is a description of deals that entered it. It says nothing about the ones that never did, which means it cannot detect a segment you are not contacting, a competitor winning deals before they reach you, or a price that removes you from consideration before a conversation happens.
It also flatters recency. Deals close in the period they close, while the contacted volume that produced them happened months earlier, so a funnel read as a snapshot attributes this month's wins to this month's activity. Reading the same sheet across several periods, with the top-of-funnel line included, is what turns it from a scoreboard into a diagnostic.
The short version
A sales funnel template is a stage list, an exit criterion for each stage, counts, and a top-of-funnel requirement worked backwards from the target. The exit criteria column carries all the value and is the one left blank. Keep source, segment, deal size and days-in-stage as fields rather than stages, write the denominator beside every percentage, and let the arithmetic tell you when the target and the list size disagree.
Frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions- How many stages should a sales funnel have?
- Few enough that every one has a distinct exit criterion someone else could verify. Six covers most B2B motions. The pressure to add more usually comes from wanting to track an attribute like source or deal size, and those belong in fields instead, so the same stages describe every deal and the rates stay comparable.
- What is the difference between a sales funnel and a sales pipeline?
- In practice the words are used interchangeably for the same document. Funnel tends to emphasise the volumes and the conversion rates between steps, while pipeline tends to emphasise the individual deals sitting in each step. The template on this page carries both, because the counts are only interpretable next to the criteria that produced them.
- How do I work out how many companies to contact?
- Backwards from the closed-won target, multiplying through each conversion rate in turn. The worked example on this page uses invented rates and lands on roughly 3,600 contacted for four closed won. The number is usually an order of magnitude larger than expected, and the top-of-funnel line is what decides whether a target is reachable.
- Why does the funnel look healthy while the forecast keeps missing?
- Usually because stage counts are being read without time in stage. A count says how many deals sit in a stage, not which ones stopped moving weeks ago. A funnel also flatters recency, attributing wins to this month while the contacted volume behind them happened months earlier, so read several periods together.
About the author.
B2B cold email experts helping companies generate qualified leads through done-for-you outreach campaigns.
RevenueFlow Team
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