Sales Funnels - x2 Success Factors, Mechanics & Insights
Updated: Aug 13, 2021
Success with sales funnels comes down to two things:
1. Understanding the mechanics so you can design a solid sales funnel
2. Understanding how to fill/move individuals through your sales funnel
A few ideas on designing the mechanics of your Sales Funnel and some powerful insights to support its success are below this Infographic.
Click on the Infographic to access the downloadable, hi res, PDF version.
Sales Funnel: The Mechanics of How it Works
A sales funnel nothing more than a well-oiled process that clearly understands the three core phases that prospects undergo:
Top of The Funnel - this is your PR activity that exists to ensure you are Being Seen.
It is typically used to warm a cold audience. The industry would suggest this is a place for prospecting. TABTF would indicate that this is the place to focus on producing well-made 'Feel Goods.' These Feel Goods exist to set up the Free Good. (middle of the funnel activity).
Middle of the Funnel (a & b) - this is your Marketing Activity that exists to ensure you are securing meaningful action from your audience.
It is typically used to warm your audience while establishing the Like/trust phase. TABTF would call this middle area - Free Goods and Trial Goods. Their purpose is to set up Invest in Goods.
Bottom of the Funnel - this is your sales activity to ensure you are as efficient as possible with the transaction while setting up the Refer Good phase of the funnel.
Understanding how each phase differs, how each step supports each other, and what qualifies an individual to belong to one stage over the other is vital for an effective sales funnel.
Powerful Insights to Maximize Return from your Sales Funnel
1. 1. One sales funnel per target market is required!
Using one sale funnel for multiple target markets yields all sorts of time/budget/resource waste.
If you are not sure what a target market is, you can find all you need here in this article. But for what we’re doing here, we’ll use the example of your firm wanting to target:
•Academics
•Corporates
•And NGOs
These three customer groups would warrant three unique sales funnels because they are three distinct target markets.
They have a different set of values, needs, and they use a distinct language. The top middle bottom activity of your funnel would be designed to mirror their specific world so that when they saw your Sales Funnel activity, each group would consider your content to be Hyper Relevant to them.
2. To go from cold to qualified marketing lead takes ≤ 16 weeks
That means you have identified the individuals within your target market and invited them to participate in the prospecting stage. You have engaged them well enough in the prospecting stage to move them further along your sales funnel for them to be considered a Qualified Marketing Lead.
Once they have been sufficiently qualified, they are handed over to Sales, who will have a few steps of their own to cover before considering the Marketing Qualified Lead to be a Sales Qualified Lead.
3. The maths to calculate how many in the top vs. how many out the bottom
A good rule of thumb is 1:20!
For every 20 perfect individuals that you engage inside your Target Market, one will buy you at the yearly average transactional price. 20 in the top. On the out bottom.
One size does not fit all, and this is an excellent place to start before you finesse it to make it right for you.
Namaste kids!
@ShannonEastman
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