Company owners should work hard to expand their customer base, enhance their business strategy, and increase sales prospects. Although it could appear to be one of the most challenging components of your organization, mapping out the purchasers’ journey is relatively easy. Using a sales funnel, you can see how people progress from being leads to becoming clients. It also gives you a step by step process where you can train your sales team or staff to better serve your potential customers. A sales funnel produces a “map” that lets you conveniently go to those issue areas and determine how to remedy them rather than struggle to identify your difficulty spots. Not having one can produce issues with the overall “Vision” of the company and signal confusion to your team on where exactly everyone who is sales or client facing should be rowing the boat that leads to more revenue.
All of this can be confusing, but it doesn’t have to. The process becomes less abstract by visualizing your company plan at each stage. A sales funnel is one of the most powerful tools to identify and assess the accomplishments and weaknesses of your company. One powerful method is building what’s called a value ladder and describing the entire sales cycle in a staircase illustration as lead progresses from a potential customer, to a customer, to a very valuable loyal customer. In this short manual, you will discover the significance of a sales funnel and how to build one that works well for your company. If you already have a sales funnel, use some of the game plan tips toward the end of this article to implement in your existing strategy.
This is where a CRM with a pipeline feature can come into play. A good CRM will enable you to create a pipeline with all of your sales cycle stages your customers go through. It may even blend a little operations as well as fulfillment stages to ensure an end to end amazing customer experience with your company.
What is a sales funnel?
Here’s the definition: A sales funnel illustrates each step a prospective client must take, from initial contact with your firm to becoming a paying customer. It’s that simple. A sales funnel serves as a road map, outlining the steps that should be taken from when a customer first recognizes your company to what happens after they make a purchase. Here’s an example
Consider owning a bike shop. You put a lot of effort into making it appealing and enticing visitors with content marketing about your bike gear, reviews, and testimonials. Someone connects with it, admiring the outside and opening the door to enter. They browse your stuff, such as a rack of new bike helmets or a collection of vintage bike handles. They then pull a product off the shelf to have a better look when a sales sticker attracts their attention. Then, in a perfect scenario, they come over to the register to pay and leave as a satisfied customer, making a mental note of your store’s location for future visits. This is an example of your sales funnel in action in the wild. There’s a few things to take note of here though.
- How did the customer discover you? Were they aware of your company before walking in?
- Did your sales floor person or you, collect email and phone number at checkout for remarketing?
- Do you have a sales funnel for upselling or cross selling in place to increase his or her lifetime value?
Chances are, your website or mobile app is at the top of your internet marketing funnel. Visitors go down the process as they browse your items, put them in their shopping cart, and proceed to checkout, finally arriving at the bottom of the funnel when they make a purchase. It’s easier to map things out digitally but it’s important not to forget the things you can train your employees to do. We’ll go over an example of an online sales funnel later in this article.
The importance of the sales funnel.
You may use a sales funnel to organize your marketing strategy strategically. It illustrates the consumer journey from initial brand awareness through the conversion process. You may critically evaluate the data and identify the areas that want improvement by being aware of how it operates. Don’t worry, there’s software to do most of this heavy lifting for you.
It is easier to focus your team’s efforts on precisely what needs to be done to increase conversion rates when you have a clear vision for each step a lead may take via your website or business model.
Do you have a high bounce rate, indicating that visitors quickly lose interest and leave once they click to visit your website? Or do they peruse the merchandise, make a few additions, and then go? Shopping cart abandonment is what this is known as. There’s loads of KPI’s to measure the health of your business.
Without a sales funnel, it might not be easy to focus on the critical areas that require improvement—making one now will save you time later when searching for solutions to low conversion rates. This is what we call – bottlenecks, and they can be business killers, because oftentimes businesses do not have a service or product problem or even a staff problem. They have a sales problem. As Mark Cuban says: “Sales cures everything”.
A walkthrough an online sales funnel
The modern sales process has changed dramatically in the last few years due to the advent of social media marketing, marketing automation, and content marketing — and those changes make the traditional old sales funnel very clunky and not seamless. For example, here’s an illustration of how a funnel structure functions for a potential customer who wants to wait to buy.
- You post an ad for your goods or services on websites that offer social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Google. This advertising has a backlink to a landing page on your business’s website. You’ve now developed awareness.
- An automatic pop-up message with a promotion for visitors who join your email list appears after a minute or less of browsing the website.
- Over the following days or weeks, these leads get emails and develop a more substantial interest in your business.
- You conclude each of these emails with a Call-to-Action (CTA). This message will change depending on your services and how you want customers to interact with your company.
- The sales lead clicks on this CTA after mentally assembling some of your goods and services. It directs them to a different landing page, most likely your online store. They may interact with your goods and put them in their shopping basket here. They are now in the decision-making phase.
- Now is the moment to take the next step and make them an offer they can only accept if you have previously in your emails. It may be a promotional sale or a limited-time discount for a specific item. From the decision stage to the action stage, you must move them.
- They opt to buy since they can’t resist the deal and have grown to like your brand. You can then go to the retention stage. Send them pre-written emails to increase their satisfaction and joy with the purchase. These aid in fostering brand loyalty so that customers come back to you in the future for any comparable purchases.
The 4 Distinct Stages Of Every Sales Funnel + Example:
Awareness: To direct prospects to your landing page, you posted an advertisement on social media.
Interest: You increase your email list by providing the ideal incentive for your target audience.
Decision: You sent the possibility to your shopping page. The buyer has already decided and is almost ready to complete the transaction.
Action: Well done, the sale has been accomplished; you gave them an offer they can’t refuse. You may now concentrate on growing a solid client base and improving customer retention.
Conclusion
You may gain a more thorough understanding of where your firm excels and where it struggles by developing an effective sales funnel visualization and monitoring the data following its integration. Your marketing staff no longer have to make any guesses because it offers clear solutions and answers. Also, by using a CRM like LeadDragon, you’re able to see all of your sales funnel at a glance keeping you in the loop whenever there’s bottlenecks at any stage in the sales funnel.
