What is a Sales Funnel and How to Use Them?
What is a Sales Funnel and How to Use Them?
Knowing where you want to be makes it easier to plan how to get there. Mapping out the route provides some well needed perspective, vision and focus. And while sometimes it is fun - and let’s be honest, unavoidable at times – to charge map-less into the unknown, your sales are perhaps not an area of your life you should be winging it entirely.
A sales funnel essentially illustrates the path prospects or leads take to a sale. They are something that are universally applicable to brick-and-mortar and online businesses, across all industries. But they are also deeply personal to your offering too!
Sales funnels can be broken down into many stages and minutiae, however below I have grouped them into four key stages to get you thinking about the distillation process from lead to first sale and beyond!
But before we get into it, it is important to note that your sales funnel will never be static. There are two key components to managing this:
First, your sales funnel strategy must be reassessed periodically and updated to reflect changes.
Second, your sales funnel needs to be constantly optimized to ensure the sales journey isn’t too rushed or too long and convoluted. We are streamlining babe and we are working to get this journey as smooth as smooth can be.
Right! Through the funnel we go!
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Awareness
This is the first section of the sales funnel and it is the place in which you transform cold leads into warm leads. A cold lead is, very simply, someone who it not yet aware of you. In other words, at the top of funnel, a sales lead or prospect becomes aware the solution that you are offering.
It is the moment of discovery and when you and your prospect meet. Maybe they were introduced to you in the form of a tweet, or a google search, or a friend had shared your Reel. This is why creating engaging, accessible and shareable content is really valuable, as well as building your network of collaborating with others is this is applicable to you. You gotta get the word out there!
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Interest
They loved the Reel you did on 3 Ways to be a Sustainable Florist and they want to know more! In this section of the sales funnel, a warm lead demonstrates active interest in your offering. The likelihood is, is that they are doing some broader market research at this stage. This is the time to swoop in with incredible content that helps them, but we’re not selling just yet. Not explicitly anyways.
The aim here is to establish your expertise, help the lead (now warming up nicely) make an informed decision, and offer to help them the best way you can.
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Decision
It’s heating up and we have reached the decision. The decision stage of the sales funnel is when the customer is ready to buy. They may be considering a few different options – and hopefully, you are one of them.
This is the time to make your best offer. It could be free shipping, a discount code, a bonus product, or a surprise! Whatever your offer, make it stand out and be so irresistible that your lead just cannot wait to get involved. The best advise I can give here is to make sure you do your own market research, and ultimately, work towards showing up authentically through your business.
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Action (and beyond)
We have reached the bottom of the funnel. It is through action that a warm lead turns into a hot lead. This is the moment where they have purchased and invested into your offering.
BUT it does not stop there. Once a lead has journeyed through your sales funnel, you want to keep a hot lead hot. Once passed the action phase, the hot lead will return to the interest phase. In other words, here you work towards customer retention and building a firm, loyal community through your business in which you can grow together. Express gratitude for the purchase, invite your customer to reach out with feedback, and continue to nurture them.
What is really exciting at this moment is that you can start to envision this as less of a funnel and more of an ecosystem - or a funnel that leads into an ecosystem that flourish side by side. Ultimately, envision this process in whatever way feels best. However, what is important to take from the concept a sales funnel is that it is all about mapping out a process in which you turn cold leads into hot leads, who you then work to retain.
And there you have it - the fundamentals of a sales funnel! Let me know how you get along working with them!
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