What is a Sales Funnel?

Do you know some people could use your solutions yet they haven’t heard of you? Also, not everyone who shows interest in your product ends up buying it. That is where a sales funnel comes it. Sales funnel is the analysis of the potential customers’ journey from learning about your product to purchase. A great sales funnel can elevate you from a small-time loss-making business to meeting all your business goals.

Read on to find out all the essential information about sales funnel:

Sales Funnel Stages

• Awareness

The first step in developing a sales funnel is identifying the customer’s pain point. At this time, the customer is yet to determine the exact problem. You must help them define the precise issue. For example, the customer is feeling back pains every time they wake up. They are yet to realize that they need a better mattress.

Research by Hubspot shows that most marketers find prospecting the most challenging step. Some of the means to reach your prospective clients at this stage are blog posts, quizzes, infographics, and webinars.

In the awareness stage, you are not looking to make any sales, instead of reaching out to as many people as possible. You want to create awareness of your products and raise interest. This is where you turn the untouched prospects into leads.

• Interest

This is when the clients have defined their problem, and they are actively looking for solutions. This is where you come in with excellent content to attract them.

Create a consistent brand message that the customer can relate with. Also, use various channels to ensure you reach as many prospective customers as possible.

Some of the means to use to create interest are blog posts, chatbots, email campaigns, and social media trials.

Pay attention to your prospective clients’ reactions.  Tracking the emails and social media posts with most interactions is one of the ways to monitor the exact problems your customers face. Also, offer any additional information on questions and concerns prospects raise at this stage.

• Decision

This is when the prospect is interested in your solution. They are looking for more details about your product, like pricing, packages, and options before they decide to purchase.

Assure the customer that your product is within their budget and will provide them with a desirable solution. Show them what it will feel like to use your products by offering discounted pricing or free samples. Some of the useful content at this stage are testimonials, customer reviews, discount codes, and case studies.

• Action

Once the earlier stages are successful, this is the stage where you seal the deal. The client buys your products. While it might seem this is the ultimate goal, you have to ensure the solution works for them. Demonstrate to them how best they can use your products.

Consider using special discounts, customer success tips, and follow up emails to ensure customer satisfaction.

• Long-term Relationship

As a company, your main goal is to have loyal customers who are happy to use your products. Customer retention saves you time and money. The cost of customer retention is five times cheaper than acquiring new customers.

Having regular customers also help in consistent revenue as they make regular purchases and are likely to refer other people to you. Some of the strategies to ensure long-term customer relationships include referral programs, email campaigns, and product tutorials.

How to Improve and Manage Your Sales Funnel

• Understand the Target Audience

Not all your customers are the same. They come with different needs and pain points. You have to understand and address their challenges and concerns. It is the lack of sufficient pain point solutions that stops them from buying your products. Once you know and provide the right solution, your customers will purchase and become loyal to your products.

• Eliminate Friction on Sales Process

Sales friction is anything that makes it hard for the customer to make a purchase. Some of the sources of sales friction include slow loading pages, unavailable search boxes, and a poor display of products. These factors lead to confusion and stagnation on the sales funnel that makes it hard to complete.

Even though you cannot entirely eliminate the friction in sales, limit them as much as possible. Your content should resonate and be easy to use by the target audience. The content should also be informative and easily accessible. Also, make it easy for the customers to contact you through several means. Your page must also have a “contact us” page or phone number.

• Be Ready to Adjust

Your products are all about your customers than any other thing. To ensure you maximize your sales, give the clients what they need. This is not a call to overhaul the whole product; rather, you make some little adjustments depending on client needs. Continually look for customer feedback and reviews to decide what the clients need. Once you make changes, let the customer know that it is based on their suggestions. This promotes long-term relationships.

• Use Sale Metrics

Data is the most critical evaluation factor in your sales funnel. Collect, analyze, and interpret all sales data to measure your sales funnel success. After this, you will decide whether to change your tactics or brand message depending on your sales funnel performance.

• Build Trust with the Customers

If you are looking for loyalty from your customers, then you must give them reasons to trust you. Show them that you care about them, not their money. One of the ways to build trust in customers is through constant communication. Create useful blog posts and support articles to show that you care for their success. Customer rewards also goes a long way in showing your appreciation.

Leaky Sales Funnel

A leak in sales funnel is when you keep losing leads. It ensures loss of revenue and slows business growth. You must determine and sort the source of the leak in your sales funnel early enough. Identifying the leak involves both the marketing and sales team working together to compare strategies and outcomes.

The first step towards determining leak in your sales funnel is by conducting a funnel analysis. The analysis helps you understand the lead acquisition until the drop off point. After which you come up with ways to ensure high conversion rates.

The best way to measure sales funnel leaks is by using analytics tools. Some of the most popular analysis tools are Google Analytics for smaller businesses and KISSmetrics and Mixpanel for larger enterprises. These easy to use tools integrate with the sales funnel enables you to observe and notice all the data within the system. Your conversion rates determine your sales funnel efficiency.

Once you have determined the leaks on your system, the next step is to look for ways to improve the conversion rate by blocking all the possible causes. Some of the possible solutions are clearing browser and device incompatibility. For cases of low visitor conversions, consider using more visible opt-in buttons. Also, optimize your page for different traffic sources and talk to your customers to determine their challenges and provide solutions.

Increase your customer engagement to improve your conversion rates.

Mistakes in Sales Funnel Management

These are some of the errors that lead to failure in most sales funnels:

• Lack of Proper Sales Training

Your sales team runs significant parts of the sales funnel. Other than recruiting skilled and experienced staff, you also need to offer regular training. The training ensures they are well equipped with information on the products, and they stay motivated. This helps them solve customer concerns and questions comprehensively.

• Assuming Leads that Don’t Buy are Useless

Some organizations tend to discard leads that don’t buy as useless because their main goal is sales. They don’t realize that customers fail to buy due to various reasons. The best way to go about a failure to purchase is to interact with the lead more. Inquire if they need a different variation if it is anything to do with pricing or any other factor. After this, you look if you can provide what the client is looking for.

• Failure to Measure Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

Most companies concentrate on the last stage of the sales funnel, thus cannot establish issues in the earlier stages. Identifying the issues within the entire system allows you to solve problems early enough. You also get to train your sales team on how best to improve on each stage hence more leads and eventual conversion.

• Failure to Create long-term Relationships Opportunities

Most organizations, once they make sales, get back to the first step of the sales funnel. They unknowingly miss the opportunity to create a repeat client when going for new ones. This leads to loss of revenue as repeat clients account for 40% of company revenue.

Bottom Line

Creating a perfect sales funnel involves a lot of work. Apart from the sales funnel tools, your sales and marketing team must work together for the success of the funnel. Breakage at any stage leads to failure of the whole system. Ultimately, getting the right sales to funnel right assures you of meeting your business targets.