As a beginner in business, you might often find yourself in a visionary state. You have these grand ideas that make you feel motivated to get a jump start with your plans. However, the sad truth is that great ideas and motivation aren’t enough to make you succeed. An entrepreneur must understand the tricks of the trade in order to avoid pitfalls including the important concept of a sales funnel. 

A sales funnel is usually a pictorial representation of the various sales stages that your lead will have to circumvent before they become your customer. 

You may ask “Is a sales funnel with a series of stages necessary when you can just directly try to make a sale?” 

Why is a sales funnel necessary? 

First, trying to push a sale often drives prospects away. People find it irritating when someone tries to push them towards a sale. You drive away even those prospects who wanted to make the purchase.

Second, without a sales funnel you’ll have no idea of how many people have become your customers. You might lose leads because of forgotten follow-ups and nurturing emails that were not sent. 

That’s why every business should create and follow a sales funnel. This ensures that all leads who landed on your page are properly followed-up and nurtured until they convert. It works according to a plan to affect the decision of prospects. You don’t make their decision for them, but let them get to the conclusion of making a purchase. 

Advantages of Using Sales Funnels

Here are some of the many advantages of sales funnels that will amplify your business to success: 

1. Marketing becomes simpler and easier. 

A sales funnel lets you have an accurate view of how many leads entered your funnel in contrast with the ones that finally converts. This will allow you to reverse calculate how much more leads you need to enter your funnel for you to hit your target. You can then invest your money on the sources that offer more returns. 

It also tells you the step by step things you need to do according to the interest of your audience. Marketing becomes easier when you know what you’re doing. You don’t have to make new pages or hire designers and programmers to implement a sales funnel. Just use a simple sales funnel tool to build every page, form or webinar within a few seconds. 

2. Sales forecasts are more accurate. 

With a sales funnel, you’ll be able to accurately predict how much you will sell in the future. Not only does this help you with your sales plan for the next quarter, but you can also start putting in efforts to meet your projected target for the next quarter or fiscal year. 

How?

Only those who come out of the funnel will actually purchase what you offer. As a result, there won’t be any extra effort or waste of time and resources on people that are not your prospects. With one or two experiments, you would know exactly what percentage of visitors make it to the other side of the funnel. This allows you to better forecast results, reducing the risk of every new step. 

3. Improved Conversion Rate. 

Like mentioned earlier in this article, you drive away many potential customers when you hurry into making a sale. A sales funnel is a process comprising several steps between the time of visit and sale. It starts with helping your audience identify the problem and find a solution, and then lead them towards an action. In the end, you will see that more visitors made the purchase with this targeted marketing. 

A more clear funnel means more targeted marketing which in turn brings in more leads. More leads means more interests, and ultimately more customers. Also, another reason for increased conversions is because your sales team has a 360-degree view of how every lead passes through the funnel, the time it takes to become a customer and the conversations that are happening with your business. This helps them to personalize and refine their own sales pitch.

4. More accountability for your sales. 

Through a proper sales funnel in place, every single activity could be tracked. You will know your best sources, your best-selling products, the geography that has most of your paying customers, the social media platform that has the most responses, and even the salesperson who has exceeded expectations. No more blindly reaching out to your leads and confusions during incentive time! 

5. Content becomes more appropriate. 

Every piece of content needs to be designed according to the preferences and concerns of the reader. You have to learn about their fears, interests, and many other things to create convincing content. With a sales funnel, you would know the stage of the buyer’s journey. This allows you to choose a topic and use a language that connects to the reader leading them towards a sale.

Know who you’re talking to. It’s impossible to influence anybody without a tailored, personalized approach. Who are you targeting? Without this knowledge, you’ll have no idea how to frame your messages and make them relevant to your readers. 

6. Rake in more revenue. 

Every benefit mentioned above directly translates into the one benefit that every business cares about the most in the end. More money! The importance of money in business cannot be exaggerated. Money is crucial to get a business up and running. Once profits start coming in, some of that revenue can be reinvested in the business to attract more customers and rake in even more profits. 

Through the help of a sales funnel, you’ll be able to know what helped you rake in the extra revenue. Then, you will be able to replicate your success and in time, even double or triple it. 

CONCLUSION

Indeed, the sales funnel is an indispensable concept in business growth. It is of tremendous importance to your brand and your customers as well. It will enable you to choose, pursue and convert the right prospects and optimize your opportunities. Remember, at the end of the day sales is a numbers game. If you need help in building or choosing what strategy to use in your sales funnel, you can visit funnelrolodex.com to find experts for any funnel-related problems you have.