Guide to Building a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel can help you track your leads as they progress closer to becoming paying customers.

• An instrument used to track leads as they transform from prospects to customers is a sales funnel.
• You can improve your sales and marketing efforts by looking at your sales funnel.
• Three sections make up a sales funnel: the top, middle, and bottom (or high, middle, and low).
• Small firms who wish to enhance their sales and marketing tactics should read this article.

You need to construct a sales funnel whether you run an offline or online firm to draw in and convert visitors into customers. Moving individuals through the various phases of the sales process until they are prepared to purchase your goods or services is the main objective of your sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel describes the steps an individual takes on the way to becoming your customer. It consists of three parts:

1.The marketing at the top of the funnel draws potential customers to your company (e.g., the advertising on your physical storefront, or the landing page of your website).

2.All the steps in your sales process that occur before the sale are included in the center of the funnel (e.g., people trying on clothing in your store, or website visitors reading about the benefits of your products).

3.The last purchase is made at the bottom of the funnel (e.g., customers paying for clothes at checkout, or website customers entering their credit card info to complete a purchase).

Importance of a sales funnel

The sales funnel illustrates the steps buyers will take to buy your good or service. You may better comprehend your sales funnel’s operation and its weak points by analyzing it. Additionally, it will assist you in locating the gaps in the various stages of your sales funnel (i.e., where prospects drop out and do not convert into customers).

Importance of a sales funnel

The sales funnel illustrates the steps buyers will take to buy your good or service. You may better comprehend your sales funnel’s operation and its weak points by analyzing it. Additionally, it will assist you in locating the gaps in the various stages of your sales funnel (i.e., where prospects drop out and do not convert into customers).

Knowing your sales funnel will enable you to control how prospects proceed through it and whether they make a purchase. As a result, you can invest in marketing initiatives that draw in more prospects, create more pertinent messaging for each stage of the sales funnel, and increase the number of prospects who become paying customers. It will also give your insight into what customers are thinking and doing at each stage of the sales funnel.

4 stages of the sales funnel

From the time that prospects first discover about your product or service until they buy it (or don’t buy it), they will move through the four stages of the sales funnel. Each of the four stages, which represent a prospect’s attitude, calls for a distinct kind of communications. The abbreviation AIDA can be used to help you recall the four stages:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Decision
• Action

Awareness

Awareness is the initial stage of the sales funnel. This is the moment a person learns about your good or service for the first time. They could become aware of you as a result of your advertising, social media exposure, or word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family. Or, a potential customer may have discovered your firm through a Google search that led to your website, an advertisement, or reading your blog.

By clicking a link and purchasing your goods, the prospect could turn into a client if the timing is perfect. The prospect will most likely need to be persuaded to visit your store or website, call or email you, or otherwise interact with your business.

Interest

Interest is the second step of the sales funnel. The prospect has now gained knowledge of your business, your brand, and your goods or services, and they have made the decision to assess it based on their degree of interest.

At this point, you should post excellent content that educates and informs the prospect without directly pitching them. During this phase, if you use a forceful or aggressive sales technique, you risk turning off the prospect and forcing them to leave. Your material should highlight your subject-matter knowledge and assist the prospect in making a choice.

Decision

The decision stage is the third in the sales funnel. The consumer is prepared to buy at this point and may be weighing multiple possibilities. They will compare prices, packages, and other elements at this point to determine what is the best choice for them.

You should present your strongest offer at this time. You may provide free delivery, a coupon code, or an added bonus item when customers place their order, for instance. Making the offer enticing is crucial if you want the prospect to accept it and proceed further. The prospect may be persuaded to act by your content. Sales pages, webinars, or phone calls may be used to convert prospects into clients.

Action

Action is the last stage of the sales funnel. When the prospect uses your product or service, they turn into customers (or they decide to leave without making a purchase). If the consumer purchases something, they are now a part of the ecosystem of your business.

Despite the fact that the transaction is finished, the process never does. Keeping customers happy will encourage them to make more purchases in the future. Building consumer loyalty should be a goal of your content. For instance, express gratitude for their purchase, request comments, provide post-purchase assistance, invite them to subscribe to your email, or sign them up for a rewards programme.

How to build a sales funnel

Moving prospects from the initial point of contact to the point of sale requires the creation of a sales funnel. The prospect’s position in the sales funnel may then be determined, along with the effectiveness of the funnel, by tracking the amount of behaviour and engagement at each step.

A sales funnel may be made in a variety of ways, and several firms and sectors have their own kinds of sales funnels. To establish a sales funnel for your company, adhere to these steps:

1. Create a landing page.

A prospect frequently has their first chance to learn about your company, its goods, and services on the landing page. Users may click an advertisement or link on a social network website, download an e-book, or register for a webinar to get to your landing page.

Your landing page should concisely summaries your business and the special advantages of your good or service. Your sole chance to impress prospects may be on the landing page, so the text must be powerful and persuasive. In order to keep highlighting your value to the prospect, it should also contain a mechanism to get their contact details.

2. Offer something valuable.

You must deliver a benefit in exchange for a prospect’s email address. For instance, you may provide a free e-book or whitepaper containing insightful and relevant information.

3. Nurture the prospect.

Nurture the prospect with information that informs them about your product or service now that they have expressed enough interest to offer their email address. You should communicate with them frequently (once or twice per week), but not so frequently that the subject becomes monotonous or off-putting. Make that the information satisfies their primary needs and dispels any possible objections.

4. Close the deal.

To complete the transaction, make your finest offer—one that the prospect will find difficult to reject. You may, for instance, provide a free trial, a product demonstration, or a unique coupon code.

5. Keep the process going.

The prospect has either made a decision to purchase or not at this stage in the sales funnel. You should carry on the process of relationship development in any scenario.

If the prospect ends up becoming a customer, keep the connection going by teaching them about your goods or services, interacting with them frequently to foster loyalty, and providing excellent service to keep them as valued clients. Send them frequent emails to keep in touch if the potential customer decides not to buy. Utilize several email nurturing series to keep trying to convert them into clients.

6. Optimize your sales funnel.

Your work is never finished, even once you’ve established a sales funnel. You should always seek out methods to enhance and optimize your sales funnel and identify any areas where prospects are being lost. Pay attention to the sections in the sales funnel where prospects transition from one stage to the next.

Start at the very top of the funnel. Analyze the performance of each piece of content. With your original material, are you attracting enough potential customers? Your material should encourage potential customers to click the call to action (CTA). Rework that element or try something different if they are not doing that or if one piece of content is receiving less clicks on the CTA.

Analyze the landing page. The material (such as a blog post or Facebook ad) that directed the prospect to your landing page should be reflected in your offer and CTA. Do customers feel comfortable providing you with their contact details? Test each element of your landing page—including the headline, pictures, body content, and CTA—to determine what is and is not effective.

In the sales funnel’s action step, test each offer. Compare the outcomes of several offers (e.g., free shipping versus discounts). How many purchases do your email nurturing programmes and other marketing initiatives result in? If one offer performs much better than another, concentrate on using that offer to close prospects and consider how you can make it better.

Keep tabs on your client retention rates. Find out how frequently clients come back to buy your goods or services. Are customers purchasing more goods or services and returning frequently? Keep note of how frequently they recommend your business to others.

Sales funnel FAQs

How is a sales funnel different from a marketing funnel?

The marketing funnel ends when the sales funnel starts. By directing prospects from their initial engagement to the point when they are somewhat interested in knowing more about your products or services, the marketing funnel increases prospects’ interest in your brand. The lead generation and nurturing processes are aided by the marketing funnel. The prospect enters the sales funnel after becoming familiar with your brand and leaves the marketing funnel.

What is the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?

A sales pipeline is a process that converts leads into prospects and customers. Each stage is completed by the prospect before they make a purchase and sign up as a client. The steps in both the sales pipeline and the sales funnel are identical, however they are shown differently. The sales funnel aids sales teams in comprehending the overall number of deals and what proportion of those deals have successfully completed each stage of the sales process whereas the sales pipeline describes the value, amount, and stage of various open transactions at any one moment.

What is a sales funnel manager?

A sales funnel manager assists in managing the customer’s path from awareness to action as well as finding and plugging any sales funnel leaks. CRM software automates and streamlines the process of managing the sales funnel, including qualifying leads, monitoring prospects’ behaviour at each stage of the buyer journey, and following up automatically when the timing is appropriate. CRM software may also aid in the definition of the sales procedure, the detection of sales funnel leaks, and the acceleration of lead conversion.