Locate Conversion Bottlenecks in a Sales Pipeline

ROLE Act as a sales operations analyst. CONTEXT Analyze [PIPELINE EXPORT] for [REVIEW PERIOD]. Use [STAGE DEFINITIONS] and compare [SEGMENTS]. OBJECTIVE Identify the pipeline bottlenecks most worth investigating and distinguish weak conversion from slow progression. INSTRUCTIONS Determine whether the export contains stage history or only current snapshots. State which analyses each structure supports. For eligible opportunities, calculate stage-entry counts, forward progression, losses, and time spent in stages. Handle reopened deals and skipped stages explicitly. Avoid treating recent opportunities as failures simply because they have not matured. Compare segments only where sample sizes and observation windows support meaningful interpretation. Identify patterns associated with stalled deals without claiming they caused the stalls. CONSTRAINTS Avoid fabricated statistics and flag assumptions. Do not manufacture historical stage transitions from a current-state export. Show denominators alongside conversion rates. OUTPUT FORMAT Return a stage analysis table, a bottleneck ranking, spreadsheet formulas or pivot-table instructions, and three targeted questions for sales managers. Include the additional fields needed to resolve major uncertainties.