Reverse funnel: how to calculate how many leads you need

Reverse funnel is the calculation that starts from the revenue goal and works back to the top: how many customers, proposals, meetings, leads, and visitors you need to get there. Fill the fields below and see the result right away. It runs in the browser and does not store the values you type.

Revenue target for the period

How much do you want to earn from new customers in the period, for example in the month or quarter.

Average ticket per customer

Average revenue from a closed customer, in the same period as the target.

Visitante → lead

Out of every 100 website visitors (users, in GA4), how many become leads: fill out a form, ask for contact or download something.

Lead → meeting

Out of every 100 leads, how many saw a meeting.

Meeting → proposal

Out of every 100 meetings, how many reach a proposal.

Proposal → customer

Of every 100 proposals sent, how many become customers.

Visitors today, in the same period as the goal (optional)

Average number of website users in the same period as the target, for example the last 3 months in GA4.Fill in to see how far you are from your goal.

Resultado

Fill the six fields to see the result.

Example

Example: goal of $100,000, average ticket of $10,000, 2% from visitor to lead, 20% from lead to meeting, 40% from meeting to proposal and 25% from proposal to client.

Customers: $100,000 ÷ $10,000 = 10.

Propostas: 10 ÷ 25% = 40.

Meetings: 40 ÷ 40% = 100.

Leads: 100 ÷ 20% = 500.

Visitantes: 500 ÷ 2% = 25.000.

Lead to customer conversion: 20% × 40% × 25% = 2%.

Why the top of the funnel needs to be so big

Sales consultant Chet Holmes describes, in the book The Ultimate Sales Machine, a buyer pyramid: in any market, only a small fraction are ready to buy now.In his reference, around 3% are buying, 7% are open to hearing a proposal and the other 90% have not yet thought about the subject, do not see themselves as customers or are not interested.

These percentages are his reference, not a universal rule, and change from market to market.What matters here is logic: if few are ready to buy, the top needs to be big, and the calculator shows that size in numbers.

To focus the effort, Holmes proposes the Dream 100: a list of the hundred or so accounts you most want as clients, worked on one by one, with constant contact and useful content, rather than shooting for a huge base.It works well in high-ticket B2B, where each account is worth a lot.

Use o resultado como ponto de partida para decidir onde investir: aumentar o volume de leads, melhorar uma taxa ou subir o ticket.

Frequently asked questions

What is a reverse funnel?

It is the calculation done backwards. Instead of starting with traffic and seeing how much becomes revenue, you start with the revenue target and find out how many customers, proposals, meetings, leads, and visitors are needed to get there.

Where can I find the fees for each stage?

In your CRM and GA4, looking at the last few weeks or months: users turned lead, leads turned meeting, meetings turned proposal, and proposals that closed. If you don't already measure, start with an honest estimate and swap for real data as soon as you have it.

Why is the result rounded up?

Because there is no half client or half meeting. Each step is rounded up before calculating the previous step, which gives a number that you can plan.

The number of leads became too large.And now?

See which rate is lower: that's where improving pays the most. Increasing the average ticket also reduces the entire funnel. The Growth Maturity Diagnostic helps to find the bottleneck.

Where are MQL and SQL in this funnel?

Each company defines MQL and SQL in one way, so the calculator uses steps that everyone measures equally: lead, meeting, proposal, and customer. If you measure MQL and SQL, multiply the rates of the steps between the lead and the meeting and use the result in the Lead field → meeting.

Where do I see the visitantes do meu site?

In GA4, the number of users in the target period.Use the average of a few months, not the month of a peak.

Quer saber onde o seu growth trava?

Funnel size is a number.The Growth Maturity Diagnostic shows what's behind it: acquisition, retention, data and process.It's free and takes just a few minutes.

Make the diagnosis