Why you need a Sales Funnel | A must-needed resource for any online business.

What is a Sales Funnel

To understand Sales Funnel you need to understand how a sale was made in a brick and mortar store first

Let’s take an example of a carpet store.

A person walks in to the store and looks at all the carpets.

A sales person greets him and welcomes him.

He tries to ask him questions on what he is looking for based on his need, preference and usability.

He suggest the customer options and gives the various features and closes the sale.

Now this looks easier said than done.

Now imagine if you had to attract the customer to the store before he even decides to make any purchase ? How would you do that?

If there are similar stores right next to you how would any customer likely to come inside your store?

Well a sales funnel resolves this and not only you can get to follow a customer journey from prospect to a buyer. A Sales Funnel can create opportunity to showcase new products and services and continually find new customers and close sales.

A Sales Funnel is a representation of the various steps involved in a customer journey from being a new contact to someone who ends up buying your product.

What is the meaning of Sales Funnel?

What does this actually mean for someone who is hearing this for the first time

Don’t worry ,

let me break it down

This word has come into prominence mainly due to online marketers and software companies who build these software to make the process easy without having to use any code.

You can create a visually and what you see what you get interface and make this more interactive and better reach for your potential customers.

Its the entire methods and process involved in making a new visitors who lands on your website become your end customer.

Sales Funnel Definition?

A Sales Funnel meaning and definition are similar:

When a customer is made to go through prospecting, approach, presentation, overcoming objections, closing a pitch, and follow-up.

In online marketing, it is a step by step approach which makes your customer go through the various offers.

This is presented in each step and when someone takes action or click on the link.

It creates a sequence of processes like automated emails, videos, or messages sent to your customer to make his purchase decision smooth and easy without the overwhelm of someone constantly following him up.

The various tools used here are content blogs, emails, videos, landing pages, or bridge pages to make that specific sale.

Why do you need a sales funnel?

Unlike the old brick and mortar store, the business has changed the way it is carried in the online space.

A website is accessible 24/7 and digital products or services are not limited to specific geography.

Hence anyone can visit your site from any country at any time and check your services offered or product.

In this dynamic scenario, it is very difficult to manage if the owner is in a specific geographic location and the need to fulfill his customer requirement is global.

So systems and process which can take care of this are automated and can help a customer in his purchase making a decision by creating a sequence of the process.

This not only fulfills their need and requirement also help the owner to take care of them at any given point of time or location increases sales.

Benefits of sales funnels

Lets see what are the benefits of creating a sales funnel:

One of the biggest benefits would be to have a process which is systematic and generate fresh leads.
You can easily turn potential prospects into paying customers
You can start building relationships with leads when you set this process at each step of his journey and using what you call segmentation and automation.
You can continually improve on your services once the system takes care of your customers and you don’t have to worry. delivery of right message at the right time.
You can grow your business and expect repeat customers by selling more services or products to existing customers.
You can expect consistency in your sales once you know the numbers required to achieve your goal and how your funnel converts.

Sales funnels for beginners

A Sales Funnel need not be a complicated process especially when you are starting out.

All you need is:

An Attention-grabbing Landing Page

A great Copy to entice him to share his email

An Optin form to capture his email

An email autoresponder sequence.

This is usually a group of 3-7 emails that are sent sequentially to remove objections and help him make the decision to buy.

Now let’s dig deep into what are the actuals steps in a full-fledge Sales Funnel

Sales funnel stages

The traditional conceptual model of creating any advertising or marketing communication message is the AIDA model get attention hold interest arouse desire and then obtain action.

AIDA is a simple acronym that was devised a long time ago as a reminder of four stages of the sales process

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action a variant on AIDA adds an S for satisfaction. indicating the fact that happy customers will buy more

Attention

You know that a salesperson should get the attention of the customers right?

Without attention, they can hardly persuade customers of anything the best way to get their attention is to surprise them when the salesperson talks to them the first few seconds are essential.

Potential customers will listen attentively and rapidly to decide.

A salesperson should grab the others attention immediately it is generally better to open conversation with something that gets them interested rather than something that makes them uninterested

Interest

Once the salesperson has their attention he needs to sustain that attention by getting the prospects interested he can get their interest by

listening to them talk about their problems

demonstrating rather than just telling

getting them actively involved

the salesperson should also watch out for the boredom factor people may get interested but one cannot expect to keep their attention forever

Desire

Once they are interested in the product and what the salesperson has to say the next step is to create a desire in them.

Desire is a motivation to act and lead towards the next stage. Desire is like a fire and can be stoked by many methods like

Showing how other people approve of the item

Informing them how the offer will solve some of their problems

Action

This is a magic stage where they take action on their desires and actually buy the product or agree to the proposals of the salesperson.

A Salesperson should be aware of any signals which a customer hints at while asking about what can they get with the product or after-sales support.

The salesperson should use appropriate closing techniques so that the deal finally comes to an end

Satisfaction

In this stage the prospect has to be given a chance for a trial the goods and services and other incentives need to be tried out to find satisfaction

AIDAS principle advocates to build up a level of satisfaction or the prospective buyer and it has to be reassured by the salesperson that the buyer decision was correct

Sales funnel template

Sales funnel template is basically mapping out your potential customer journey till he becomes your actual customer and follow-up after that.

I am going to reference how a typical salesperson would lead this in a brick and mortar store.

The personal selling process is a consecutive series of activities done by the salesperson that lead to a prospect taking the desired action on buying a product or service and finish with the follow up contact to ensure purchase satisfaction.

It is a process that allows marketers the greatest freedom to adjust a message to satisfy customers information needs.

Personal selling allows the marketer or seller to communicate directly with the prospect or customer and listen to their concerns answer specific questions provide additional information.

Inform persuade and possibly even recommend other products or services we will examine how the steps involved in the personal selling process

Prospecting

It refers to identifying the and developing a list of potential clients sales people can seek the names of prospects from various sources including trade shows, commercial databases company sales records, in-house databases, website registration, public records referrals directories and a wide variety of other sources

Prospecting activity should be structured so that they identify only potential clients with the profile and are able willing and authorized to buy the product or service

This activity of prospecting is greatly enhanced today using websites with specially coded pages automized with keyboards this helps prospects in easily finding the salesperson when they search the web for certain keywords related to their offering.

Once prospecting is underway it is up to the salesperson to qualify those prospects to further identify likely customers and screen out poor leads

Video (Youtube), Paid Ads, Word of Mouth are all example of prospecting and awareness creation channels

Pre approach

Before engaging in actual personal selling sales professionals first analyze all the information available to them.

To know and understand as much about the prospects as possible.

During this pre approach phase sales professionals try to understand the prospects current needs.

Current user brands and feelings about all available brands as well as identification makers review account histories.

If any access product needs plan or create a sales representation to address any likely concerns of the fall prospect and set call objectives the sales professional also develops a preliminary overall strategy for the sales process.

During this phase keep in mind that the strategy may have to be refined as and when more information about the prospect comes in

Approach

The approach is the actual contact the salesperson has with the prospect.

This is a point of selling processes where the salesperson meets and greets the prospect provides an introduction into established rappo.

This sets foundation of the relationship and asks open ended questions to learn more about the prospects and their needs.

Making presentation

The product story in unfolded during the sales presentation in a way that speaks directly to identified needs and wants of the prospect.

This is a step by step process .

At this point in the process prospects are often allowed to hold and or inspect the product sales professional may also demonstrate the product audiovisual presentations with or without slide presentations.

This is usually when sales brochure booklets are presented to the prospect sales professional should strive to let the prospect do most of the talking during presentation and address the needs of the prospect as full as possible by showing that they are truly understand and care about the need of the prospect

Overcoming objections

Professional sales people seek out prospects objections in order to address and overcome them when prospects make objections.

It often signals that they need and want to hear more in order to make a full information.

If objections are not addressed and identified then sales professionals cannot effectively manage them.

Asking clarification clarifying questions and overcoming objections are critical for professional sellers and is a skill area that must be continually developed

Closing the sale

Although technically closing the sale happens on products or services are delivered to the customer and payment is received.

Here we will define closing as asking for the order inadequate readdressing any final objections or obstacles the salesperson in this phase.

Ask for the order or other details like what color they prefer what they would like to take the delivery how many units required etc many sales professionals are either too weak or too aggressive when it comes to closing.

Salesperson should be in a position to know when to ask for the order and close the sale.

whether ask for the order if the prospect gives an answer other than yes it may be a good opportunity to identify new objections and continue selling a proper initial training on closing the sale will help the salesperson to perform effectively on field

Follow up

The phase is an often overlooked but it is a very important part of the selling process.

After the order is completed everyone’s best interest that the salesperson follows up with the prospect or customer to make sure the product was received by the customer.

It is in proper condition, on time, installed properly , proper training delivered and the entire process was acceptable to the customer.

This is an important critical step in creating customer satisfaction and building long-term relationship.

The sales professional should also make sure the feedback is taken from the customer about the product and service in the customer experience is any problem.

The sales professional can intervene and become the customer advocate to ensure 100% satisfaction then follow up can also lead to uncovering new needs additional purchases and also referrals and testimonials which can be used as sales tools

Typically a Sales funnels Template should help your business show up at every stage of your customer journey, making his journey to the purchase a smooth transition as possible.

Types of sales funnels

The Sales Funnels have been used in various marketing automation approach.

Some of the successful one are as below.

The Lead Magnet Funnel
The Squeeze Page Funnel
The Webinar Funnel
Automated Webinar Funnel
Product Funnel
Product Launch Funnel
Educational Funnel
Membership Funnel
High End Client Sales Funnel
Survey Funnel
Video Sales Funnel
Tripwire funnel
The Ask Campaign Funnel
The Bridgepage Funnel
The Livedemo Funnel
Homepage Funnel
ECom Store Funnel
Cancellation Funnelhttps://prosperousaffiliate.com/what-is-a-sales-funnel/

Sales funnels types explained

The Lead Magnet Funnel

This is a great funnel model to build your email list.

In This funnel you give out something of value to instantly gratify your visitor .

This can be an e-book, video, checklist.

This is an ethical bribe you might say to ask your visitor to share their email in exchange of something which the visitor will feel good about.

The Squeeze Page Funnel

A Squeeze page as the name suggest is all about having a single goal. to get the email of the visitor.

You will not have any distractions for the visitors to click or any options but to share his email and get to the next page.

Most successful marketers use great copy and raise some sort of curiosity for the visitor leading him to share his email for an answer in the next page.

The Webinar Funnel

Webinars have become one of the main sources of getting to know new customers .

A Webinar Funnels manages the Webinar attendee lifecycle .

It not only manages any attendee for the webinar but also during the webinar.

When the product or service is showcased and scarcity revealed it can be a useful tool to manage sales and with an autoresponder added to the list you can manage conversions better and follow up on those who attended but could not purchase during live webinar.

Automated Webinar Funnel

As the name suggest Automated Webinar is not a live webinar but is a recorded webinar and is more like an on demand webinar.

You will not get the opportunity to interact with the presenter live but there is someone who can answer your questions posted or email you the response later.

This can be watched 24/7 and this is like a sales machines without a break playing every hour or as per the scheduling.

The Sales Page Funnel

This funnel uses a long sales page as the main content to convince and close on the product or service . This usually is followed by a bump up page or bump down page to increase the value of each sale.

Product Launch Funnel

Many marketing gurus and companies use this type of funnel to increase curiosity among potential customer.

First and create a lauch based on this product launch funnel. Usually a small preview of the product or services is shared to the audience and helps the momentum grow

Education Funnel

This is a funnel created for the education industry and tracks students and the coursed they prefer and closes the admission of a specific student.

Membership Funnel

This funnel is created to sell paid membership sites.

There is usally a trail offered before someone purchases the membership. Typical example here is my GetResponse subscription.

After the trail you get to choose a username and password and then log into the membership dashboard to enjoy the benefits of a member.

High End Clients Funnel

This funnels uses a screening process to check if the potential buyer fit the ideal customer.

This is use by many high end Marketers who want to check the profile fit the ideal customer and then the automated sequence of the content and relationship building exercise is carried on.

This usually happens when the ticket price is high and exclusive.

Survey Funnel

A Survey is given to the visitor and based on his feedback on the options an automated customized emails are sent to the visitor.

This makes him feel engaged and he gets something which interest him

Video Sales Funnel

As the name suggest A video is used to explain the customer the advantages and why they need to buy a product or service which is being promoted .

It has been found that a video converts better than a written copy for many services offered and the end buyer feel there is someone real and with a face they can communicate with and this helps in closing a sale.

Tripwire Funnel

The most effective tripwire funnels used are a low ticket front end offer which looks too good to resist and once the credit card details are captured they are offered a bump up offer with a simple option of a click .

If no there is a bump down offer.

This type of funnels are primarily used to increase the cart value of a buying customer at the point of sale.

The Ask Campaign Funnel

This is similar to Survey Funnel but its not limited to one survey .

A Customer is asked at every stage of his purchase lifecycle and based on his response even before any product is created .

It is used to build better relationships with your customer and debunk his mental blocks and belief system before he actually purchases anything from you.

Bridgepage Funnel

This is a very useful funnel for affiliate marketing.

This is used to pre-frame your visitor on what is going to happen next and what the product is all about.

This has been found very useful for conversions as the affiliate may not have any control on the main page offer but he can send visitors to a bridge page and explain what they will see next and how is that going to be useful for them.

LiveDemo Funnel

This is a great way to demonstrate live any product and its features and especially helpful when you want to emphasize on various features and how they can help your visitor.

You not only do live feed but also show when the product is launched and keep this as a periodic schedule.

Homepage Funnel

This is a basic home page which pushes any visitor to a sales funnel. This is usually laid out like Story-Offer- Invite which captures leads and pushes them in to a sales funnel right from your website home page.

EComStore Funnel

This is used in many niche and small business ecom store where all the products are displayed on a single page and when someone click on any product they are taken in a funnel page rather than a checkout page

Cancellation Funnel

When someone tried to leave or unsubscribe from your list this type of cancellation funnel is used to salvage the customer.

This can happen while cancelling a service, return of goods and refunds.

There is usually a survey with options to see why the customer is trying to leave and then try to save this particular sale.

This not only helps reduce refunds but also gives an insight on what/why the customers are not happy.

Sales funnel metrics

Sales Funnels helps you understand your visitors and the customer acquisition cycle better.

The Key important things to note are:

The funnel entry points
How many convert?
The total sales value.
Average value of your order
Lifetime value of a customer
Break even point

Funnel entry points

How do you define any entry points and why this is an important metric. Any entry point of your sales funnel could be the

when anyone is added to your email list

when any visitor click on your ads (Facebook Google, Istagram ads)

You could also check the total number of visitors to your website if you are not able to check on any ad clicks and sales funnel entry points.

This is basically to know the number of leads that are going through your sales funnel. This will help us to check how many convert.

How many convert?

This is a metric which helps us in knowing the conversion rate.

Once you know how many sales were made in a particular session (30 days, or paid campaign clicks numbers) you can calculate the conversion rate as follows

how many converted / total leads x 100= conversion ratio

Total sales in value

This is not the quantity but the value of your sales we are looking at.

Total units sold x value of each sale= Total sales value

This is basically the total revenue generated for that specific period.

Now Total revenue generated is one of the most important factor .

If the conversation ratio is high and your total revenue is not where you would want then it is time to look at the pricing factor for each sale value or the way customer is going through the conversion and how to make it more effective.

If you have high converting and high revenue you are in a great position to replicate this in future.

Average value of your order

The average value of your order refers to the money spent on an individual sale per customer. So this is the average in revenue which is generated by a sale.

The value can be calculated by Total revenue (which is described in the previous section) / Total number of orders in a timeframe which you want to measure.

This is a very critical metric to measure. This helps you understand how much revenue each sale is bringing on an average and i almost forgot to mention.

Lifetime value of a customer

There is one more important metric which you should know in online business and that’s lifetime value of a customer .

The lifetime value of a customer is defined as the total revenue that is generated from a single customer as long as he is your existing customer who is likely to keep on buying.

It is calculated as follows:

Average order value of your customer x frequency of your customer purchase= Lifetime value of your customer

Break even point

This is the number of sales required so that you make up for your spends and are not in a loss anymore.

From this number of sales what ever sales happens would be your profit numbers.

In simple terms

break even point= Total expense (month)/ Total Sales Revenue- cost for making your products

(if you have monthly expenses as $2000 and your product cost is $200 you have sell 10 units that month to be able to pay your bills)

Optimize your sales funnel

Creating a sales funnel and trying to understand the different stages of your customer journey takes time when you are new to this. I get this.

But when you try to do something and if you don’t get the best result out of your effort makes you want to pull you hair out.

This takes time mind you and you need to focus on the specific area where and hen your potential customer in funnel move to the next level in your funnel.

Lets try to see how you can optimize your sales funnel if you started with Facebook ads.

Facebook has a very good profiling structure of its user based on their interest and when you start with Facebook ads its just not enough to go with one ad.

You need to create at least 15-20 ads to run for different profiles of its users to get to know which profile gives you the maximum profits.

Split Testing

You can split test your landing pages (A/B testing ) and now you can even split test emails which go to each individual with the segmentation and automations features in email service providers.

Split testing takes time to finetune but it will really help you to get your prospects covert more efficiently.

The results are the best way to see what works and what does not.

Typically when you start at the top of the funnel :

You are creating post with content on your blog, video on you tube, Facebook post or ad with images and in Instagram and Pinterest with images most of the time. This is to get your potential customers to click on your link which is a call to action.

When they click they come to a page called landing page .

You need to ensure your call to action conveys the similar content as your blog post or Facebook ad whatever was used to drive this individual to take action.

Here you could test the headline, images, color, copy and images to find what works better and choose the best working as your template.

When the visitors take action and decide to purchase from you here you could also split test your offers.

Would a free training work? would a e-book work?

Would a discount on your initial service work?

Would a discount on your product work ?

Would a free shipping of your product work?

When you test these and find what’s the best converting you would be surprised how much a small difference would make a huge impact on your sales.

Finally after a purchase you could check on their satisfaction level. How many refunds? why are they asking for refunds? If they don’t ask for refunds will they refer your product to their friends? Are the coming back to buy again? This is very important to know how are you keeping your customer happy.

Do not give them a reason to leave you and look for somewhere else.

Conclusion

Are you looking to create or improve your sales funnels?

Are you new to affiliate marketing and want to earn while learning all about affiliate marketing?

If you want to start using funnels and automate your sales system ensure your website has a system in place to attract and convert your leads to sales

If you want to hypercharge your website sales and looking to start learning from one of the best coach I have come across then book your session today on how to start leveraging other people’s proven products.

You will have access to Zach proven sales funnel to acquire new customers the legit way and scale your online business.

Understanding and creating your sales funnel is one of the important concepts in your business. it takes time and it is hard work but make note it is the only way to stay ahead in a competitive world