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How To Create A Winning Sales Funnel [Infographic]

Every business uses a sales funnel.

A sales funnel is the predetermined journey people are taken through before becoming your customer. It can also bereferred to as a sales tunnel or sales pipeline.

A sales funnel aims to create effective, measurable and scalable strategies through each major stage in the buyingcycle. This enables businesses to create a focused series of events that all point towards the primary objective of salesconversion.

It also allows businesses to ‘sell right’ – a modern twist on traditional sales and marketing practices – by buildingpositive brand awareness and reputation, before qualifying leads.

Prior to social media marketing and the current wave of marketing advancements, lead generation and sales practicesheavily involved advertising and interruption marketing.

Now, the rising popularity of inbound and content marketing disciplines are what work. Being found when needed withuseful solutions immediately positions companies at the forefront of preference.

This very different kettle of fish from traditional methods and has almost taken the marketing world by storm, for all theright reasons too.

Primarily – it just works…

But also due to a whole host of attractive benefits, including: positioning, branding, scope, speed, service, scale, reachand experience.

The Importance Of Your Sales Funnel

If you are a successful business owner and haven’t heard of the term “sales funnel”, then chances are you do indeedhave one in place, but perhaps by accident.

Common sense and an understanding of your business and customers probably allowed you to craft a imaginary salesfunnel that you instinctively lead prospects down towards becoming customers.

Learning about how to create a robust, high-performing sales funnel will pay dividends for any business. Think about itthis way – if you’re not clear on how you currently convert traffic to leads to sales, then you can be sure that there areholes to fill that leads regularly drop through.

If you have an existing sales funnel, then you should always be looking to refine and improve upon it’s capabilities.

I consider a sales funnel as a separate set of marketing metrics – some of the most important metrics in fact – thatindicate the bottom line performance of lead generation strategies.

And by improving the processes to which your business makes money, it is almost impossible not to see a moreprofitable bottom line.

Is A Winning Sales Funnel So Important That My Business Would Fail Without One?

The short answer – more than likely.

Without any form of sales funnel, a business would rely on people navigating straight to their website and making aone-off impulse purchase.

What typically happens with a poor sales funnel is that some leads are generated and some trickle through to becomeone-time customers.

The longer answer to this question is – it depends, on many things…

Initially, your business offering is what hinges on your success. If you’re lucky enough to invent (and patent) somethingthat everyone needs and there is no competition, then the money will likely roll in, in one way or another.

The better way of thinking about it is that without a winning sales funnel, you will be leaving money on the table, insome shape or form.

If the volume of leads is satisfactory, the cost of lead generation (marketing budget) is viable and the sales conversionprocess works to the extent in which customers are realised and a reasonable profit is turned, then your business willlikely be happy.

But what would you say if you can improve this process by 10%? By 50%? What about by 500%? Creating a winningsales funnel can do just this.

When a very effective sales funnel is created and combined with very effective marketing campaigns, your customerswin. Your business wins. Your wallet wins.

Before discussing the components of a winning sales funnel, here is an infographic by 9clouds that provides anoverview of what a typical sales funnel looks like.

Sales Funnel Infographic

Infographic courtesy of 9clouds

Sales Funnel Components

It’s important to remember that your sales funnel should be tailored to your own business and it’s capabilities. It’s notwise to think a sales funnel comes in ‘one size fits all‘.

The following sales funnel components are examples of those typically found in businesses who operate mainly online.

Awareness

Attracting targeted attention to those who are interested in your business services or products. Many practices arepresent here, including all marketing disciplines, PR and branding.

Lead Conversion

Lead generation materials such as lead magnets (high-value free gifts or offerings) and landing pages should be usedto capture attention efficiently, while customer service alleviates buyer concerns and develops relationships. Thedesign of all points of contact should be taken into account and focused on this first stage of converting attention intoleads.

Nurturing

It’s normal that people don’t buy after the first point of contact – credibility needs to be built first. Email automationshould be used to build authority and provide additional value to leads, while social media management can developrelationships and nurture prospects in public spaces.

Sales

Only when leads are qualified enough to react accordingly to your business offering should it be presented directly tothem. The point of transaction and purchasing phase should always transmit security and comfort.

After-Sales

Never stop once a customer makes a purchase – creating repeat business opportunities costs 6-7 times less thanacquiring a new customer.

Use compelling customer service to ensure your business offering is experienced positively by the customer, whileundertaking any up-selling or cross-selling opportunities that should arise. Customers who bought a product or serviceonce and who found it valuable are most likely to buy again from you. Create customer loyalty.

Also use this time to gather testimonials to use in further marketing efforts and offer any incentives for customerreferrals and word-of-mouth marketing – some of the best types of marketing that exists.

Over To You

Hopefully, this has got you thinking about how you can create your own sales funnel and design each stage tomaximise your conversion metrics.

You might find it inspiring to learn from existing sales funnels and profitable to add your own twist to them in order tosuit your business needs.

Is there anything that you would benefit with more explanation on?

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