What it is
Conversion is the path from interest to commitment: the offers, the pages, the forms, the follow-up, the qualification logic, and every handoff along the way.
Why it matters
Conversion is where demand becomes pipeline, and it's the system most often blamed for failures that originate elsewhere. It's also where money is most obviously wasted: acquisition spend flows into a path nobody has examined end to end, and the leak is invisible because each team only sees its own segment.
Common symptoms
More leads requested as the answer to everything. Strong traffic with weak pipeline. Handoffs where response time is nobody's metric. Forms that collect what the CRM wants rather than what the buyer will give. Close-lost treated as an ending rather than a signal.