Your sales people ask you for well-qualified leads to help in customer acquisition. They want buyers with bucks, who’re authorized to buy, need what you offer, have a sense of urgency, and can benefit from one of your solutions or products.

It sounds simple. So why does your sales funnel fail in producing qualified leads? There are several common reasons.

Your Website Is a Lone Warrior

Your website can’t do the job alone. It’s just a cog in the sales and marketing machine. Your website may be optimized and starring on Google’s rankings. Your blog posts could be being shared frequently on LinkedIn, Twitter and across the Web.

Your goals for new customer acquisition in 2014 are set. You want to get off to a running start and achieve them. Your first stop should be to check out what's in your sales funnel.

Find the Facts in the Funnel

A sales funnel report should enable you to answer the following questions:

• How many untapped leads are stalled in the funnel—not ready to buy or not yet qualified?
• How many qualified customer acquisition opportunities are ready to emerge in the next month?
• What's the potential value of these emerging opportunities?
• What's our average conversion rate?
• Are there any areas in the funnel where leads tend to get stuck and not convert to the next stage? For example, are lead conversion rates from leads to demonstrations meeting your objectives?
• How long is your sales cycle?
• Based on history, is your sales funnel growing or shrinking?

The answers to these questions give you a crystal ball for predicting sales, enable you to prioritize the sales opportunities to focus on, and provide clues for funnel optimization.