5 Steps to Create a Sales Funnel That’s Highly Effective

Sales Funnel

Creating a sales funnel online is highly effective when done right. However, it does take patience, consistency, and it is work. Make no mistake, the ultimate focus here is to increase your revenue. Your sales funnel is like a sleeve that starts with numerous people but fine tunes it down to those who are actually qualified buyers.

There are 5 steps to create a sales funnel that is highly effective.

1. Feed the funnel's front end:

There are two situations where you can build the top of your sales funnel. You can generate awareness ñ here the customer didn't know about your product/service prior. You can get found ñ here the customer is looking for a solution to a problem. This is where you can use social media, blogging, SEO, press releases, articles, etc. to make your first impressions.

2. Turn your inquiry responses into qualified leads:

It's not usually hard to get someone to click on a link to receive something, such as a white paper, but it can be more of challenge when it comes to getting those prospects to provide contain information that's detailed and insight on their business. To be a success you will need to build trust, and distribute content that's relevant.

3. Measure the campaign's impact:

When you develop a system that provides one view of multi-channel campaigns you can develop processes that are automated and can trigger specific responses based on what your potential customer's interests are, and respond with the appropriate content.

4. Identify who your qualified prospects are:

During this sales funnel phase it is key to have an integrated approach in place with your sales teams and/or marketing teams. This includes things like defining what a qualified lead is and when it should be handed to the sales department, the sales metrics for when the sales team responds to the qualified leads that are provided, etc. Some companies have sophisticated sales funnels and it's also where lead scoring comes into place. Lead scoring is a way for your company to tract the actions of the prospects on your site and actually give them a score. When a predefined threshold is reached then a specific sales action takes place.

5. Invest in intelligence:

Deepening customer knowledge should always be high on your list if you want to get a competitive advantage over your competition. The more competition you have the more important it is to educate your customers but that shouldn't always happen within the funnel. Social media, blogging, and other marketing channels that are independent of your sales funnel will ensure once that potential customer reaches your funnel they are already a highly educated individual relating to what you offer.

3 Ways to Build a Stronger Sales Funnel

Sales Funnel

Before you can maximize your sales funnel, you need to have all of the teams on board including your sales and marketing teams. So let's look at three ways to build a stronger sales funnel.

1. Target Only Relevant Traffic

One of the biggest lessons you need to learn is that they need to stop targeting those internet surfers that will never become your customer. It just doesn't make sense to waste your resources and your energy if it is unlikely they will ever become paying customers.

2. Distinguish the Importance of Issues

Most of us are aware that we need to be able to recognize problems and uncover them, but most don't distinguish between the importance of these issues, and how to raise important issues, or interesting issues. Why? Because when your prospect has needs that are interesting it will get you consideration and when your prospect has needs that are important it will get you evaluated, but only when your prospect has needs that are urgent will you get sales.

Sales peoples spend a great deal of time going after opportunities that are not urgent and without the urgency, there will never be a sale. Another common mistake by sales people is chasing after prospects where another vendor has a much better solution than you do. Not all opportunities are worth chasing after.

Of course, you should still market to important and interesting needs to get a conversation going but your sales team should be trained so that they can identify if there is an urgency because without the urgency your prospect won't turn into a sale.

3. Redefine the Sales Funnel Based on Buying Process

If you already have a sales funnel, how have you designed it? Do you have important milestones that an opportunity must pass through in order to move to the next level? If your milestones are based on sales activity, it's time for a change. This method is very inaccurate. Instead, create your sales funnel based on the buying process, and the decisions made during the buying process.

Build your milestones based on the evidence of buying decisions. This is certainly a little harder than using activity associated with sales but much more accurate when you are projecting when an opportunity is likely to happen. It is likely to do a much better job of fine tuning your sales funnel and making it more effective.