Setting up a sales funnel for your business can be a game changer. For good or for bad.
Most people don’t even know the existence of sales funnels. If you’re reading this article, then you’re probably new to the concept. That’s okay.
We will go through every important aspect of sales funnels, from the most basic definition to how you can choose the best one for your business:
Let’s begin: what are sales funnels?
A sales funnel is a marketing strategy. It’s the process you implement to guide a certain person or business from being a complete stranger to an established customer.
To better understand what sales funnels are and how to set up a sales funnel for your business, have a look at the image below.
Marketing & Sales Funnel. Source: HubSpot
Basically, a sales funnel is a sequence of stages: from visitor to lead, from lead to MQL and SQL, to opportunity and finally to customer.
Why is it a funnel? Because as you already know not all visitors become leads, and not all leads become customers.
That’s just how business works. However, thanks to sales funnels your conversion and retention rates will increase.
As you can see in the graphic, there are 3 parts to a sales funnel: the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel.
Action: Try to imagine how the sales funnel looks for your business. Is it similar to the one in the graphic? If not, what’s missing?
The top of the sales funnel is the very first stage of the sales process.
Imagine no one knew about your business. How would you attract new people? How would collect their information so that they go from strangers to visitors and to leads?
The top of the funnel is the responsibility of your marketing department.
The goal here is simple: creating attractive content such as blog posts, videos, and even advertisements to get people to visit your website.
Then, offer something in exchange for the visitor’s information: a weekly newsletter, an ebook, a free tool.
Action: Review your marketing strategy. What are you doing to attract strangers to your business? And once they visit your website, are you collecting their emails?
The middle of the sales funnel represents the transition from lead to customer.
It also marks the transition from the marketing department to the sales department. And this should be a smooth transition. So smooth that the lead doesn’t even notice.
Many businesses fail tragically at this stage. They bombard their leads with spam emails with the purpose of closing the sale right away.
Instead, you should continue to offer meaningful content and advice to your leads.
Focus on how you can help them to gain their trust. Eventually, they will be open to purchasing your products or hiring your services.
Action: Think about how your marketing team and your sales team work together. Is the transition from one to the other efficient?
Once you have a lead’s contact information and you have gained their trust, what do you have? An opportunity. A sales opportunity.
The bottom of the sales funnel is the responsibility of your sales department. Everything is ready for them to close the deal.
At this point, the focus must be to make the most out of all the information you gathered about that lead in the previous stages.
What are their problems and challenges? How did they contact you? What product or service have they showed interest in?
The bottom of the funnel is where you and your employees need to apply the usual sales techniques.
Action: Review your sales strategies. Are you using all the information the marketing team gathered to close the sale? Are you making any efforts to guarantee you will retain that new customer in the future?
Clearly, setting up a sales funnel for your business can help you organize the way you handle leads.
But does your business really need a sales funnel? Or is it just a fancy way of saying your marketing and sales teams are working together efficiently?
Actually, there are numerous reasons why you should set up a sales funnel for your business. Two of those reasons stand out.
Once you set up a sales funnel for your business, you will have created an automated journey for your customers.
It will be much easier for you and your employees to sell. Thanks to your sales funnel, you don’t need to rebuild the process for each new lead.
This is particularly important because the sales process may take different times for different people and businesses.
Some potential customers need weeks or months to finally make a purchase. Your sales funnel will make sure you don’t lose that lead in the process even if you’re not paying attention to them.
From the lead’s point of view, your business will be there to guide them all along the way. From a stranger to a customer. From your marketing department to your sales department.
But the customer doesn’t really care who is dealing with them, whether it’s the marketing team, the sales team or even the human resources department.
If you set up an effective sales funnel, all the client will know is that your business cares about their needs and problems. And that’s how you gain their trust.
The key component of a sales funnel is email. And email has the highest ROI of all major marketing channels.
Return on investment for all major marketing channels. Source: Marketing Insider Group
Making the most of email throughout the entire sales funnel will guarantee you get better results and close more deals.
Action: Before setting up a sales funnel for your business, collect some information about how much you’re spending on marketing and sales. What if you could invest that money into a more efficient tool to get the results you want?
So we’ve been talking about what sales funnels are and why you need to set up a sales funnel for your business.
But what results can you honestly expect from a sales funnel? It depends on how you do it.
Some businesses — mostly large corporations — implement their own sales funnels. However, there’s no need for your business to do it.
When we started looking for efficient and useful sales funnels for our own business, we came upon ClickFunnels… and now we couldn’t recommend anyone else.
ClickFunnels is easily the most complete and efficient tool for handling sales and leads.
As for results, ClickFunnels report their active users have shown an average of 41% more sales when compared to their results previous to joining ClickFunnels.
One of our favorite features is how well ClickFunnels integrates with other marketing and sales tools.
According to their own CEO, “ClickFunnels gives you everything you need to market, sell and deliver your products and services online”, without the need for a tech team.
So what can you do with ClickFunnels? Basically everything you can imagine: generate leads, sell products, run a webinar, send emails, etc.
Once you start using ClickFunnels to manage your entire marketing and sales operations, you will not only get better results, but you’ll be able to do it in an extremely comfortable and user-friendly platform.
Action: Interested in learning more about how to implement a sales funnel for your business? Try ClickFunnels for Free! Click here to get a Free 14 Day Trial and build your first funnel.
We’ve explained what sales funnels are, why you need to set up a sales funnel for your business and we’ve even given you a specific recommendation of where to start. If you’re still not sure where to start or if your business needs a sales funnel, contact us and let’s talk strategy on a free, no-obligation call.
Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to increase your sales by guiding visitors and leads into becoming customers?
Disclosure: Kaizen Sigma is an independent ClickFunnels Affiliate, not an employee. Our agency receives referral payments from ClickFunnels. The opinions expressed here are our own and are not official statements of ClickFunnels or its parent company, Etison LLC.
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