Funnels
"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves."
Steve Jobs
purpose
Let’s get familiar with two broadly used business marketing concepts that you may or may not of heard before:
- Sales Funnel
An easy way to represent lead conversions. The funnel opens at the top with a lead’s interest in your services and ends at the bottom with a completed sale. - Sales Pipeline
The set of steps that go into making a sale. These steps initially allow you to organise the sales process and more effectively convert leads.
Funnels and pipelines can be interchangeable and cover a range of areas which can be confusing, so for the purposes of this training and for you to get clear on what we will need for your website build, I will be referring to them in these core ways.
SALES FUNNEL
> Attract Customers / Lead to Client Journey
A sales funnel in relation to attracting customers (potential buyers) is the journey prospects go through on the way to purchase. There are several steps to a sales funnel but the common goal is to take thousands of leads (widest part of the funnel) and move these potential customers through your funnel with the intention to filter and narrow them down to only have your ideal customers at the base of the funnel who will most likely buy from you and will be best able to help.
OFFERING FUNNEL
> Retaining Customers / Problem to Solution Journey
An offering funnel in relation to retaining customers (customer loyalty and repeat business) is the journey your customers go through to achieve their goal. This is where your offers come in and the order in which a customer proceeds through them. The common goal is to capture as many customers as you can with your smallest offer (widest part of your funnel) and get them to keep investing in bigger and better offers until they have completed everything you offer and have solved all their problems which gets them to the exit point (smallest part of your funnel).
SALES PIPELINE
This refers to the stages that you may go through to convert a lead into a customer. It is separate from the sales and offering funnels such that the pipeline sums up all the customer sales funnels and the different processes you may complete depending on each different buyer journey. Essentially it is an overview of what’s being done at each stage of your different funnels and includes your automation and marketing processes.
OBJECTIVE
During the next few topics I will be explaining each element in more depth and helping you to relfect on what you currently have as well as curating what you are missing.
Having clear funnels will allow you to stay focused on what should be happening in your business to both attract leads and convert them into sales at multiple points without overwhelm which will crucial to your business success.
To start, let’s do a quick overview of funnels and pipelines summarised by the short videos below.
Sales Funnel Process