Sales Funnel
purpose
To understand how to capture leads and convert them into customers, you first need to know the 4 main stages of the LEAD TO CLIENT journey:
The Lead/Awareness stage is when the prospect knows they have a problem, and want to actively resolve it, but doesn’t yet know that you exist or that you can help them solve that problem. At this point they may or may not know what the solution is to their problem.
The Consideration/Evaluation stage is when the prospect is aware that you exist and that you have a solution to their problem, but they are still evaluating other possible solutions.
The Conversion/Purchase stage is when the prospect is almost ready to buy your solution, but they may still have a few questions or objections to overcome first.
- The Client/Retention stage is when the prospect is now a client however you need to consider future offerings that can benefit them which kicks off the journey again from stage 1.
Creating A Great Buyers Journey
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the Awareness stage is to move the prospect from Awareness to Evaluation by introducing them to your brand, making them aware of the solution to their problem, and introducing them to your solution (your product). Lead magnets are free resources that attract your target audience to complete your call to action which in turn, gives you their email address and allows you to continue fostering the relationship.
At the Evaluation stage, your prospect understands the solution to their problem and is aware of your brand/offer. However, they are still evaluating their options (and likely looking at your competitors). Aside from capturing their email, your goal is to move the prospect from Evaluation to Conversion by giving them a quick win which proves that you are the authority they need to pay attention to. You may also have the goal of acquiring initial customers during this stage.
At the Conversion Stage, your prospect is aware that your product provides the solution they seek, but they haven’t quite made the decision to buy yet. The intention here is to maximise immediate customer value. You’ll do this by helping them overcome any objections to the sale, and giving them the extra “nudge” they need to buy right now. You may also have the goal of retaining existing customers and increasing buyer frequency/boosting conversions on your cross-sells and upsells.
Process
Each person is different and you don’t know what each of your website visitor wanted when they landed on your page or which stage of customer the journey they’re in.
We refer to this as the “Buyer’s Journey” and we want to factor this in when creating your website and the associated automation.
This is why it is important to get clear on your offers and make sure that you have a suitable lead magnet, a downsell and an upsell available at every point in your sales funnel.
This allows us to strategically design the content on the website to direct the user to the right step in their own journey and communicate a personalised experience to each one of them based on their buyer stage.
“But can’t I just have some basic info and direct them to call me as a lead magnet?”
I do not recommend this. There are two big purposes of the website which is firstly to reduce your time spent converting leads 1:1 and having to repeat the same sales speech over and over again. Your website will allow you to curate specific sales pages that do that for you (will get to this later in the course). The second is to give your lead an opportunity to try before they buy. This is where the lead magnet comes in which provides a valuable offer or incentive. By having a no risk, instantly accessible ebook, whitepaper, template, audio, or similar downloadable asset, you can offer actionable, concrete, and helpful advice to solve a part of your prospective customers’ problem. Small enough that they can do on their own and will still need to use your product or service, but big enough that they see a positive change in their life and will want to continue the journey with you.
“Why is a specific downsell and upsell important in the lead to client journey? Can’t I just figure out for each person the best option for them?”
This is a big question for most of my clients and whilst there is a no one size fits all, in general the bigger picture comes back to time management and scalable income. By having a birds eye view of your offerings and how they all connect it means you can make sure that there are no gaps or duplicates in your funnel, and it helps you to curate content more effectively by ensuring that at each stage of working with you a client is getting more advanced products and services and are continusously improving their life. A downsell allows you to maintain a client who is not quite ready to progress and an upsell allows you advance a client who is. The key to leveraging your time is to have these processes automated for you, and to achieve that you need to have your offers and sales funnel clearly mapped out and have the journey be suitable for “most” of your clients. By all means you can customise your offers for specific clients but if you are aiming at generating lots of income you will need to have hundreds / thousands / millions of clients a year and it is just not feasable to be planning your sales funnel at a one to one level. You need to be thinking of what will work on a bigger scale.