How to Create a Sales Funnel Chart in Excel?

Visualizing your business’ funnel is one of the critical tasks you need to undertake regularly.

Why?

You need actionable insights into the journey taken by leads before they drop off or convert into buying customers. Besides, you need these insights to optimize your funnel for maximum conversion and reduced drop-off causes.

How can you get actionable insights into your business’ funnel?

If your answer is a Funnel Chart in Excel, you’re absolutely right. Funnel Chart is specifically designed to help you visualize the journey taken by leads before they convert.

Creating a Funnel Chart in Excel does not have to consume your valuable time or even overwhelm you. This blog will provide you with a complete guide on Funnel Chart, its definition, types, examples, practical tips, and how to create Funnel Chart in Excel. First, let’s define the chart of the moment.

In this blog, you’ll learn:

• What is a Funnel Chart?
• Creating a Funnel Chart in Excel
• How to Make a Funnel Chart in Excel? Step-by-step Guide
• Customize Your Funnel Chart in Excel:
• Applications of Funnel Chart
• Types of Data You Can Visualize With Funnel Chart
• Types of Funnel Charts
• When to Use the Funnel Chart in Excel

Let’s get started.

What is a Funnel Chart?

Definition: You can use Funnel Chart to show progression through a series of connected stages in a process, such as sales or student admission rate in a college.

For instance, a college admissions officer can use a Funnel Chart to show the following:

• The number of individuals who visit the admissions page.
• The number of students who download
• The subset of prospective students who then attend a meeting on campus or virtually.
• The smaller group of prospective students who apply.
• The students that actually enroll and begin studies.

As you can see (above), the number of participants in the college’s funnel drops as potential leads move through each stage.

The Funnel Chart takes its name from its shape, which starts from a broad head and ends in a narrow neck. The funnel’s width indicates the number of users at each stage of the process as it narrows.

Creating a Funnel Chart in Excel

Here’s the truth.

Analyzing funnel data is easier said than done, especially if you don’t have the right tool. Besides, if Excel is your go-to data visualization tool, accessing the Funnel chart is impossible.

We totally understand Excel is a trusted data visualization tool because it’s familiar and has been there for decades. But, this spreadsheet application should not be your go-to Funnel Chart maker, especially if you want to harness high-level insights.

Microsoft Excel does not have a Funnel Chart.

You have to combine Bar Charts in a very time-consuming process. We estimate you can spend an hour generating an easy-to-read Funnel Chart.

We understand switching tools is not an easy task because you have to learn about the new one. And this is why we’re not advocating you ditch Excel in favor of other expensive data visualization tools.

There’s an easy-to-use and amazingly affordable tool that comes as an add-in you can install in your Excel to access advanced charts, such as Funnel Chart in Excel.

The tool is called ChartExpo. Keep reading to discover more.

A complete guide on how to install ChartExpo Add-in for your Excel application.

How to Make a Funnel Chart in Excel? Step-by-step Guide

To get started with the Funnel Chart in Excel generator, follow the steps below:

• Open your Excel application.
• Open the worksheet and click the Insert button to access the My Apps option.
• Click the My Apps button and click the See All button to view ChartExpo, among other add-ins.

• Select ChartExpo add-in and click the Insert button.

• The add-in will be added to the Excel application. It may ask you to log in if you are not already logged in.
• Once this add-in will open, you will see a list of charts available.

You have two options you can use to access Funnel Charts in ChartExpo.

• First either you scroll down the list of charts and find this chart or you can type “Funnel” in the Search box. It will filter out this chart in front of you.

• The other option is to click on the category button and browse through categories, namely as shown below:

• You’ll find the Funnel Chart under the General Analysis Chart.

Like we said, how to make a Funnel Chart in Excel should never stress you or even consume significant amounts of your valuable time.

To create a hypothetical Funnel Chart in Excel for practice, click the Add Sample Chart + Data button, as shown below.

Once you will click it, sample data will be added to the sheet and visualization will appear on your ChartExpo window.

Do you want to see the Funnel chart in action in Excel with your own data? If your answer is yes, let’s get down to business.

Example

Imagine running a recruitment firm, and you want to extract insights into the total resumes you’ve received versus the actual hires.

Which chart would you go for?

Yes, a Funnel Chart is strategically positioned to provide hidden insights into a funnel or pipeline. Let’s assume your recruitment firm generated the data below over a given financial year.

Steps	Total
Step 1 – Total CVs Received	500
Step 2 – Shortlisted	300
Step 3 – Aptitude Test	200
Step 4 – Interviews	100
Step 5-New Hires	20

• Copy the data into your Excel to get started with ChartExpo add-in.
• Select the data in the Excel sheet and then click on Create Chart From Selection.

Customize Your Funnel Chart in Excel:

This chart like all other charts allows you to change the properties according to your need. You can click on Edit Chart button to see the pencil icons on the window and then you can change any property according to your need.

If you want to add a heading on top of this chart, just click on the top header pencil icon to see the property window and add text.

You can click on the “Show toggle button” so that his heading can appear on the chart. You can even change the font size from the other property sections. Once you are done with changes you can click on the “Apply button” and then “Save Changes” to have a heading on your chart.

Now let’s have another property to explore, you can click on the “Edit Chart button” again and click on the pencil icon as shown below.

Under “Stats” section, you will have to enable the button “Show overall percentage”. Click on Apply All and then Save Changes.

Finally, you will have below look for your data visualization:

Now each step is coming up with percentage stats that can give you a better idea about the funnel flow.

Insights

• In step 1 Total CVs received was 500.
• In step 2, the shortlisted rate is 60% (300 applicants)
• Only 40% of the total CVs, could apple to clear the aptitude test.
• 20% of the total, came for interviews.
• Finally out of total 500 CVs received only 4% (20 candidates) were hired.

Like we said, how to make a Funnel Chart in Excel should never be a problem for you, ChartExpo is always available to present your data in a meaningful way.

Applications of Funnel Chart

Funnel Charts have a wider variety of uses, especially within the business context.

Maximizing sales revenue is one of the common strategic goals businesses pursue. And this means you need to track how a starting set of visitors or users drop out or convert in a sales pipeline.

To get a clear picture of how a sales funnel excel is performing with regard to revenue generation, you need to visualize data. This will guide you during the optimization stage.

Here’s an interesting fact.

Funnel Chart in Excel can be best deployed for high-level insights, especially before you dive into the in-depth investigation. Let’s check its application in great detail.

• Summarize Data

Funnel chart in Excel is ideal for summarizing data of a process, such as a sales process (prospecting to conversion). You can easily distill key insights from noise and outliers using this chart.

Sales departments in most Fortune 1,000 firms use Funnel visualization to continuously improve their funnels for the exponential growth of sales revenue.

• Identify Bottlenecks

To constantly improve a valuable process, such as a sales pipeline, you need a chart that will provide hidden insights, such as a drop-off source. For instance, there could be bottlenecks preventing the leads from converting in a funnel.

How to Make a Funnel Chart in Excel does not have to be stressful. Keep reading to discover tested and proven remedies.

Types of Data You Can Visualize With Funnel Chart

While Funnel charts are often primarily used to visualize the prospects’ journeys before converting in a sales process, you can use them for other purposes.

Depending on your business or industry, you can visualize data that exhibits linear, sequential, and flow attributes.

For example, imagine you plan to evaluate the performance of a just-concluded email marketing campaign. Where would you start?

We’re sure you’ll start by looking at the total number of emails sent by the marketing department. Other metrics you’ll check includes the following:

• Email open rate
• Clicks
• Conversion

The above are metrics that matter in the scenario. A Funnel Chart in Excel can help you track the metrics that matter to you along the funnel.

You can easily estimate the expected sales revenue if you were to increase the number of new email leads by, let’s say, 25%. Besides, this chart puts you in a position to ask relevant questions deeply connected to the problems facing your funnel:

• What bottlenecks are preventing leads from converting in your funnel?
• Can you optimize emails, checkout, or other processes to boost conversion rate?

Ultimately, the type of insights you choose to highlight with Funnel Chart in Excel depends on the nature of your business and overall goals.

Regardless, this chart can help you uncover hidden insights into the relationship between different stages in a process (linear, sequential, or connected).

Types of Funnel Charts

This insightful and easy-to-read chart comes in 2 main variants, namely:

• Trapezoidal: In a Trapezoidal Funnel Chart, the size of each section indicates its value. For instance, a larger section equals a larger value. For this reason, when interpreting this chart, look at both width and height of each section to understand how they relate to the whole.
• Stacked Bar: In contrast to the trapezoidal Funnel Chart, the focus of a Stacked Bar Funnel Chart is on the widths of the bars.

When to Use the Funnel Chart in Excel

Think about this for a moment. How would you know the weakest link in your funnel without data visualization?

If you’re an ardent user of Excel, you cannot access these charts. This is because the excel spreadsheet tool does not have Funnel Chart native support. It turns out you don’t have to ditch Excel for other super expensive data visualization tools.

You can easily supercharge your Excel to access advanced charts, such as Funnel Charts. Yes, you read that right. You can achieve the above by installing third-party add-ins (which we’ll talk about in the coming sections).

Use this chart in the following scenarios (below):

• Use a Funnel Chart in Excel if your data has sequential attributes and can be traced up to at least four stages.
• Use this visualization chart if the number of key data points in the first stage is greater than the number in the final stage.
• You can use a Funnel Chart to track potential sales revenue, conversion and retention rates, shopping cart abandonment, and workflow by stages.

FAQs

Why should we use Funnel Chart?

A Funnel Chart can help you visualize a linear process, such as a sales pipeline with connected stages.

At a glance, the shape of the funnel conveys the health of the process you’re tracking. Each funnel stage represents a percentage of the total.

How can you explain a Funnel Chart?

A Funnel Chart shows the flow of users in the process, such as client acquisition.

The chart takes its name from its shape, which starts from a broad head and ends in a narrow neck. The funnel’s width indicates the number of users at each stage of the process as it narrows.

Wrap Up

You’ll agree when we say visualizing a complex process, such as a sales funnel, is not easy. You need a specialized data visualization chart if your goal is to extract reliable, high-level insights.

What’s the best chart for the job than the Funnel Chart in Excel?

Well, a Funnel Chart is one of the visualization designs experts use to extract hidden, actionable insights into a funnel or a process.

Excel should not be your go-to tool if your goal is to create Funnel Charts that are simple to interpret and complement your data stories. Why?

This spreadsheet tool lacks Funnel Chart templates in its library.

So what tool do we recommend?

We recommend you install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, into your Excel to access advanced charts. This easy-to-use data visualization tool comes as an add-in you can easily download and install in your Excel app.

ChartExpo comes loaded with insightful and easy to interpret Funnel Charts, plus over 50 more advanced charts. Besides, you don’t need programming or coding skills to visualize your data using ChartExpo.

How to create a Funnel Chart in Excel should be a problem of the past now that you’ve discovered the solution.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access easy-to-interpret and visually appealing Funnel Charts for your data stories.