What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase. There are several steps to a sales funnel, usually known as the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel, although these steps may vary depending on a company’s sales model.

Any business owner knows the pain of just missing a sale. After weeks of pitches and demos, chatter and charm, the prospect drops out of the sales funnel without buying.

It happens. But it happens less often when you have the right sales funnel management help. Many small business sales funnels are more like sieves, with holes left by patched-together spreadsheets, sticky notes, missed appointments and forgotten follow-ups.

For your sales funnel to exist, you first need prospects who can move through that funnel. Once you have those prospects, you can track behavior and engagement using lead scoring to identify where they are in the funnel.

Here are five steps to help you create a sales funnel:

1. Build a Landing Page

A landing page will most likely be the first time prospects learn about your company. If they click on an ad, sign up for a webinar, or download an ebook, they’ll go to a landing page. That page should clearly communicate who you are as a company and your unique benefits (after all, this could be the one and only opportunity you have to wow prospects). And, most importantly, make sure the landing page has a form for prospects to enter their information — you want to capture their email address so you can continue to communicate with them.

2. Offer Something of Value

Here’s the part where you have to give something to your prospects in exchange for their email address. A lead magnet, like an ebook or whitepaper, is an effective way to offer something of value on your landing page.

3. Start Nurturing

At this point, your prospects will move from the Awareness stage into the Interest stage. And, because you have all their email addresses from the landing page, you can create an email nurture series to share educational content about your offering.

4. Upsell

As prospects move into the Decision stage, you want to offer anything that can nudge them into the direction of a purchasing decision. This could include a product demo, extended free trial, or special discount.

5. Keep It Going

In the Action phase, you’ll either land new customers or hear why prospects aren’t interested in purchasing. Either way, keep the communication going. For new customers, focus on product education, engagement, and retention. For prospects who didn’t make a purchase, build a new nurture series to check in with them every few months.

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