A sales funnel is a visual representation of customer journeys. But why, you might ask, is it funnel-shaped, and why is it so important to capture your business’s sales funnel? The truth is that no business can afford to leave sales to chance. It all begins with understanding customer journeys before optimising them to achieve an unbeatable customer experience. This article explains sales funnels, looks at ways to capture and refine them, and shows you how you can use your sales funnel to benefit your business and its prospective customers.
Why is the Sales Funnel so Important?
Stages of a Typical Sales Funnel
To understand the importance of a sales funnel, we must first consider the different stages of the customer journey it represents. Here’s what we need to know:
- Awareness: This is the top of the funnel. People become aware that your business is out there.
- Discovery: They’re interested in your business, so people decide to find out more.
- Evaluation: Now that they know more about your business, customers consider whether your offer will be of value to them.
- Intent: Having decided that your offers have value, they form an intent to purchase.
- Purchase: Following through on intent, prospects become customers and buy your product. Many people think sales funnels end here, but they should not.
- Loyalty: having achieved satisfaction from their purchase and everything that occurred after they made it, customers become supporters.
Why That Funnel-Shape is Significant
A look at the customer journey makes the entire process seem very simple. But now, we come to the reason why the sales funnel has its distinctive shape. At every step along the journey towards the bottom of the funnel, you are going to lose some of your audience. This makes sense. After all, not everybody who is aware of your business will be interested in it and find out more. They could be outside your target market, for example.
The further people journey down the sales funnel, the surer you can be that you’re looking at a real sales prospect and the costlier to your business a departure from your funnel becomes. For example:
- If a person didn’t find the information they were looking for during the discovery phase, they can’t properly evaluate your product.
- If they fail to see benefits during the evaluation phase, or decide they’ve found a better alternative, they won’t form an intent to purchase.
- If they already had purchase intent but don’t move towards a purchase, you just lost a customer.
- And, if they had a less-than-pleasant experience with your business’s service or the product they received, you’ve lost a supporter who could have brought you even more business.
Now, consider what would happen if you were to devote attention to helping your customers move from one stage of the sales funnel to the next. Clearly, you’d lose fewer people at each stage of their journeys, and if you do this really well, you’ll ultimately make more sales and have more loyal customers. That’s why sales funnels are meaningful to businesses, and why mapping yours and acting to help your customers navigate it will make a difference to your bottom line.
Sales Funnel Examples
Some sales funnels are much more complex and involve far more steps than our explanation implies. Others are far simpler or are navigated so quickly that your intervention to help customers with purchases is less necessary.
For example, a customer decides to add ordinary flour to their grocery list. They already know where they can buy it and, after a quick cost-comparison, they choose a brand and buy it. There are a few things you can do to encourage customers to buy your brand of flour, but it’s a fairly standard product, so there are limits to how much you can differentiate.
If you’re selling software, on the other hand, all the steps we’ve described would be important to you, and you may even divide the stages of the customer journey into smaller portions.
Some authorities recommend separating the sales funnel from the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel generates leads, and the sales funnel qualifies leads, directing them toward forming an intent to purchase, and guides them from there to the purchase.
In general, however, we don’t feel that it’s necessary to make that distinction in your sales funnel visualisation and it may even be detrimental. For instance, if sales and marketing work in separate silos, it can become difficult to send unified messages and create a seamless customer experience.
How to Create a Sales Funnel and Use it Effectively
Build Your Sales Funnel and Identify Elements for Each Step
Awareness
Begin by identifying your target audience and deciding on strategies to generate awareness. This may require market research and a little trial and error to determine the best platforms and strategies to generate interest.
Discovery
Consider the things people will want to find out during the discovery phase and make sure they’re easily available. Offering the highest-value resources in a format that allows for lead generation is often effective.
Evaluation
Your leads may want to further evaluate your product. Case studies, white papers, research results, and comparisons can be of help here. For software companies, this might be a good time to offer a demo.
Intent
With all the information they need to form intent at their fingertips, a little extra incentivisation is in order. For example, WordPress often uses limited time offers to encourage purchases and software companies may offer a free trial that automatically switches to a paid subscription after a set time unless users choose to cancel.
Purchase
Don’t neglect the purchase phase. Make it easy for customers to buy your product or get answers to last-minute questions. Streamline your checkout process and offer multiple ways to pay.
Loyalty
Offer excellent after-sales service to help your customers make the most of your product. This could include tutorials, support services and loyalty programs. Check on customer satisfaction with after-sales surveys that invite feedback.
Choose Tools and Resources to Work for You
You’ll need a little technological help to turn leads into loyal customers. Each of them would like to be treated as an individual, and the better you’re able to personalise and target information, the better your results will be.
CRM systems will help you to manage relationships, record interactions, and manage them. Promised a callback? Your CRM system will remind you.
Email Marketing platforms will help you automate communication while personalising content to match your sales leads’ interests and their position in your sales funnel. For example, if they’ve already demonstrated intent to purchase, discovery information will not be relevant to your prospective customers.
You’ll also need analytics tools to monitor how you’re doing so that you can adjust your campaigns based on reactions. As an example, if people aren’t opening your emails, a different subject line might change their minds. Or, if they aren’t clicking your links, decide whether you’re targeting the right people with the wrong information.
The human touch will be important too, especially as you move from intent to sales and after-sales services. If somebody has been sending out strong buying signals but hasn’t made a purchase yet, it may be worth reaching out to find out whether they need any further information or advice. Or, if customers have already purchased your product, they may contact your representatives for help if they are unable to find answers to their questions in your resource base.
Need Help Turning Leads into Loyal Customers?
Are you hoping to maximise sales without having to scale staffing to meet your changing sales campaign needs? Hoping to deploy only the most qualified sales professionals to represent you? RSVP will work with your business to develop a unique sales plan that matches your objectives and your target market’s needs. From outbound sales solutions to helping you build customer loyalty, our London-based team is ready to help. Let’s collaborate.