If you are an entrepreneur, one of the tools that can help you the most to get clients when starting your business is the sales funnel since it usually provides the best result, becoming an excellent resource for SMEs.
Do you want to know what the sales funnel consists of? Below we will explain everything you need about this tool so that you can apply it in your business effectively to notice results.
Sales Funnel Definition
Conversion or sales funnel is a gradual process that converts a visitor or interested party into a paying customer. The conversion funnel in each business or product represents the natural path customers follow when they want to buy something.
This path usually begins by becoming aware of possible solutions. Then he becomes interested in one of them, followed by the desire for the ones that best suit him and, finally, the purchase when one has sufficiently convinced him.
Why is the sales funnel successful?
Several reasons manifest the success of the sales funnel. The main one is that it emulates the natural purchasing process and tries to optimize it in each stage it comprises.
It is easier to get a sale at first if you have a store of actual, cheap and poorly differentiated products. With every minute that passes, those first-time sales are even rare.
Today, the customer has more information and options than ever before and uses them. In the same way, he is also less innocent and more cynical, and this is normal because he has had too many negative experiences and knows that the power has changed and is on his side.
So you won’t buy anything from anyone you don’t trust, who has yet to show you results, and also nothing you haven’t been able to prove. Likewise, you will not do business with companies that you do not find trustworthy. The sales funnel is all about providing you, throughout your journey from interest to purchase, with all those things: demo, trust, results, etc.
Primary phases of a sales funnel
If there were an ideal world, each business product would have a fully customized and optimized sales funnel. Although this is the real world, little can be generalized since a sale always follows common general steps regardless of the product or business.
When it comes to buying anything, for example, the natural process begins by informing us a little, and nowadays, it almost always comes out looking for it on the Internet. This indicates the importance of an online presence since it will be invisible when a firm does not have it in the early stages. Also, in most sales, the intent will die.
Below we show you what the different stages of the sales funnel are
Stage 1: Attention or awareness phase
This phase implies that the client realizes that we exist as a solution. In addition, it is a phase that can include the first contacts that do not end in a purchase. This is the mouth of the funnel (also called the “top of the funnel”).
Stage 2: Interest phase
The second phase of the sales funnel occurs when the potential client has shown enough inclination for your product or service to request more information.
Even if they have not contacted you directly, another form of interest is that they have signed up for your newsletter because they want to know more and keep you in mind. That is, there is a start to the connection.
Stage 3: Desire Phase
At this stage, the potential customer has shown interest in the product or service but has yet to be ready to purchase. This is a stage where they are often shown more information about what they can expect from your product and why it is worth buying. Also, in this phase, you can offer free samples, so potential customer experience results before purchasing.
Stage 4: Action or purchase phase
Here, the client has already been convinced, trusts your company, thanks to the actions in the previous phases, and is ready to buy, thus closing the sale.
Effectiveness of the sales funnel in marketing
Although the sales funnel is used to increase sales, it is also helpful for a company to measure the number of interested parties that reach it and become customers. This is a conversion rate that is used as a benchmark for :
- Compare with other businesses and see how you are doing.
- Monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy over time.
- See which stages of the funnel are the most or least successful.
This will be very important to find out where you are failing and fix it. If you have a good sales funnel, you will also know how you are doing in each natural phase of the sale. Imagine that you see that hardly anyone “falls through the mouth of the funnel.” This will mean you need to improve in the first phase of attention. You are not managing to call her, meaning you must improve what you have arranged in that mouth to “make noise” and turn in your direction. In these cases, what you can think is that:
- Your ads need to be more attractive.
- Your blog’s content needs to be positioned better, and you should work more on SEO and search engine optimization.
- That your commercial force needs to be more adequate.
On the contrary, if you get them to advance through the funnel but do not close sales, you will have to improve the closing process. To do this, you can perform some of these options
- Improve the product demonstration or samples you give.
- Give more follow-up to the sale to discover why they must take the last step or manage their objections.
- Improve your selling skills to execute a more professional closing in meetings.
So when you see that the number of interested parties that goes from one phase to another is minimal, narrowing the funnel too much, you should see what you can do in that specific phase to widen it.
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