Sales Funnel: What It Is And How To Implement It In Your Company. Leave a comment

See why you should implement a sales funnel in your company today!

A sales funnel is perhaps one of the most important sales pillars of a company. After all, it is with it that you can structure your process of attracting, nurturing, qualifying, and closing sales.

Even though it is so important, some companies still insist on not investing in a good funnel, either for lack of time, capital, or interest.

But what 90% of entrepreneurs don’t know is that not investing in a funnel makes your business lose a lot of money every year!

In addition, it will allow you to track key performance metrics within your company.

This way you can understand which are the biggest difficulties faced by your sales team, facilitating the development of future strategies.

What is the importance of a sales funnel?
It also helps you, the entrepreneur, to discover in which stages of the sale your team is performing less well. For example, with a funnel, you can evaluate what % of success each sales team has.

In some cases the decrease in sales may not be completely related to the closing team, sometimes the prospect leads are not qualified in the right way.

The best benefit that a sales funnel can deliver to your company is the ability to assess the performance of each time-function individually, so you can detect possible problems much more easily.

What are the stages of a funnel?
Generally a funnel has the following stages:

Lead generation.
Lead qualification.
Evaluation and discovery of problems.
Possible solutions.
Conversion.
Closing.
These are the most common steps in the sale.

See that even before the closing there are several types of approaches and objections that must be broken so that the customer actually chooses your product or service.

In other words, selling is not as simple as it seems, especially if you are dealing with B2B. The first thing you must do to create a high-converting sales funnel is to understand who your target audience (persona) is.

Choosing the target audience
This is one of the most important steps within your funnel. After all, it is here that you will decide who will be the ideal customer (target audience) to offer your products and services to.

It is worth emphasizing that it is very important to choose the right audience when making the offer, because it is from this audience that you will define the main objections and problems faced by your lead.

After choosing the target audience, it will be necessary to define which channels will be used to capture these leads. Remember that your results will be much better if you can capture leads that are already actively seeking your solution.

This reduces the work of the sales team and allows all sales to be closed in up to one third of the standard time.

Qualifying leads in the sales funnel
Another important step within your funnel is the qualification of the already prospected leads.

It is here that you will “nurture” the leads that already know your product and service, seeking to prepare them for the final stage of closing.

In this stage it is also done all the triage of the lead’s needs with the delivery potential of your service. We will also evaluate if that customer who is really interested in your solution has the right profile for the acquisition of your products and services.

This is the best time to separate the “wheat from the chaff” by filtering which customers really have a closing potential.

Questions about the customer’s goals, investment potential, and level of commitment are also welcome.

Problem assessment
This is the stage where you dissect your customer’s pain, asking as many questions as possible about their problem-pain.

Questions about goals (monthly, semi-annual and annual), short-term goals, scale potential, average ticket, billing power after the integration of your solution are perfect for those who need to discover the main pains of the lead.

It is also in this stage that you will find out if it will be necessary to “fire” the customer or not. Whether it is due to lack of alignment, or even conflict of interest, never get attached to a customer.

Delivering the solution and converting
This is the time for you to deliver the best solution to the lead (always based on his main pains and needs) taking care that you explain very well how your company will solve that particular problem (or achieve that particular goal).

It is important to remember that your customer is more interested in the resolution of the problem than in the way it will be solved.

So don’t waste time talking about the quality of your company or the speed of your service, be brief, succinct, and to the point.

Show results and give dates for them to happen. This is perhaps the best way to “win” a lead.

It is also interesting to use some success stories of similar companies that have already had results with your solution (if you have one).

Closing
Many entrepreneurs have the habit of saying that the closing is the most important part of a sale, however they are wrong.

After all, a good closing does not happen by chance, quite the contrary. Your goal here is to put together everything you have already offered the lead into an irresistible offer (not forgetting to use urgency and social proof as triggers).

That said, if you have failed in the other steps it is very likely that your lead is not going to complete the purchase and just like in most cases, the problem is not in the closing, but in the previous steps.

So always be sure to ensure that you have “broken through” any possible objections.

In addition, it is important that you are able to stay organized in all these areas, so that you can develop better sales tactics and strategies.

But don’t worry, excelcoaching has several spreadsheet options to keep your business organized! Visit our home page and find the best option for your company!