Every top-performing sales personnel has mastered the noble art of using the principles of the sales funnel. All the skills you may need to emerge as a successful salesperson are inherent in the sales funnel and are straightforward to follow. Clickfunnels illustrates how easily you can use sales funnel to turn your prospective customers who visit your website into buying and returning customers.
Many courses and tips you will get on the online platforms only teach you how to bring people into your site, and they stop at that. They never go-ahead to teach you how you should convince them to remain there and buy your products, which is the main reason you wanted them to visit the site in the first place. You end up getting frustrated after investing money and time on such tips only for a few visits to translate to sales.
Sales funnel is a complex process, but you can count on when you are serious about converting clicks to sales. You have to be willing to put in the effort and fully understand how it works to reap from the technique maximally.
What Is a Sales Funnel?
Simply put, a sales funnel your direct ticket to increased online sales. It is the tool you need to actualize your sales projections and bring your sales dreams into reality. A sales funnel enables you to improve sales and follow your sales patterns to improve them in each step.
Just like the name ‘Funnel,’ a sales funnel portrays numerous probabilities at the top and the least at the bottom. At the top, you have the potential of converting the large number of potential clients visiting your store. The number keeps dropping as you narrow down the funnel until you get to the bottom of it, where you have the least numbers of probably buying customers. The people at the bottom of the funnel are the actual representation of your sales rate success.
You can also explain a sales funnel as a direct connection to a customer’s journey phases, which you can divide into the top, middle, and bottom parts. The top part can represent the sales stage where you know the customer exists, but you haven’t grabbed them to your side. You then rush to bring them in and include them into your prospects list, still at the top of the funnel.
In the middle, this is where you convince your prospects to buy your products, and they agree to it; you later send proposals of prices and the extra services you offer, if any.
You then move to the final part of the funnel, the bottom. Here you negotiate with the client on the best price for both of you, and you close in a deal with them. It is a winning stage for both of you.
The Stages of a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel works so well for many sales personnel because they are well articulated in stages. Each stage represents key steps to a successful sales deal and should offer specific information and answers that will help your prospective buyers choose you over the others in the market and make a purchase at the end of it all.
What happens at each of these sales funnel stages, and how can you optimize each stage to boost your chances of walking out with buyers? Let us find out below.
1st Stage: The Awareness Stage
It is the very first stage and the topmost. You use this stage to create awareness about your business and improve your brand’s visibility as you start collecting leads to your business. You are free to spread wide your net so that you can capture the attention of as many prospects as possible. There is no need to push any product or service you have at this stage. But rather, you should concentrate on sharing your ideas, solutions, and advice.
In as much as you want your content to be informative at this stage, you should ensure that the content is also fun and exciting. Make it stand out as you are competing for the same customers with other businesses. Some of the contents to consider for this stage include:
- Guest Posting.
- Social Media Posts
- Personal Research.
These and others should make a good list of what to include in your introductory part of the sales funnel. Be creative, articulate, and informative with each, and you will be moving to the next stage with a majority of the prospects you meet at this stage.
2nd Stage: The Interest and Evaluation Stage
At this stage, you have prospective customers from the awareness phase who are also known as leads. A lead is more interested in getting to know your product or service better, and that’s why they enter the interest and evaluation stage of the sales funnel. In as much as the lead is concerned about knowing more about your product, they are still not ready to purchase the product, and you must do the extra work to convince them.
This is the phase where you build a relationship with your new lead to establish what they are there for. Is it a purchase they want to make at the end, or are they just around to gain information and use it elsewhere? To do this, create a consistent brand message that is familiar to your target customers. Some content ideas to consider in this stage include:
- Blog posts.
- Email Campaigns.
- Social media.
- Chatbots.
- Free trials.
- Lead magnets.
You can track what links your leads click on your email campaigns or monitor the posts they follow and engage with on social media to help you better understand their needs. All the above content ideas can help you identify how to improve your leads’ experience as you advance with them to the next stage.
3rd Stage: The Desire or Commitment Stage
At this stage, you have done a great job convincing your leads into understanding your product. Not only are they interested in your brand, but they are also willing to get to the final stage of purchasing the products. However, you will still have to do some work to convince them that the product is worth their time, and they won’t regret the decision to pick yours over your competitions.
They still have some unanswered questions on how the product you are offering them will help them, their businesses, and fit in their budgets. In this stage, you can use the following contents to move them closer to making the deal.
- Case studies.
- Live Demonstrations.
- Discount codes.
- Product comparisons.
Introduce your prospects to the life you intend to give them the moment they become your customers. You want to treat them as though they are already your customers as you teach them how to take advantage of the offers you have, such as free trials and discounts. Bring them closer home at this stage.
4th Stage: The Action Stage
The checks are signed, and the goods and services are delivered at this stage. This is where you ‘shake hands’ and say, “It was nice doing business with you” if it was a physical meet up. Don’t get too much drawn to sealing the deal that you forget your customer still needs you and your advice on getting started or acquainted with your product or service. This is where you offer them the educational material beneficial to introducing them to your products.
Some of the best kinds of content you can include in this stage for your customers include the following.
- Follow-up email campaigns.
- Special Offers.
- Bundled packages.
- Customer Success tips.
- Training webinars.
This is not the stage to relax and sip coffee while congratulating yourself for closing a deal with your customer(s). You should be as agile as you were in the first stage. Get closer to the customer, follow them up, and ask how they feel about using your product. If you disappear after making the sales, the customer might mistake you for a scammer and will likely never return.
5th Stage: Get in Touch
Getting in touch and re-engaging your customers after sales is an excellent way of breathing more life into your brand. When the customers appreciated your products, they may desire to purchase again and even refer to other users if you keep them closer to you after the first sales. Send them referral programs, upsell campaigns, live demos, webinars, and tutorials to keep them engaged and connected.
In this stage, you should be more focused on maintaining long-term relationships with your clients.
Final Thoughts
One of the best gifts you can give to your business is investing in the sales funnel ideology of running sales. As you get the ideas into action, you develop your sales skills with time. Embrace your leads in every stage of the sales funnel with utmost seriousness so that you can optimize the chance of moving into the action stage with the highest number of prospects possible. Give your leads what they want until you get to change them into customers.
DepositPhotos – sales funnel
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