How to increase sales with a “Sales funnel” (the way the pros do it)

In order to stay in business, you need to make sure that you always have lots of leads. Without them, where will your future sales come from?

But it’s not enough to just get new leads—you have to nurture them so they move closer and closer to actually purchasing. You essentially have to nudge them along the path that leads to buying. And while they are on that path, marketers say they are in your “sales funnel”.

What’s a Sales Funnel?

At its most basic, the term sales funnel refers to your list of leads: all the people that know about you, who need your service, are thinking of buying from you, are about to buy from you, or even those who have already bought from you and may buy again. This list of people is also sometimes called your sales pipeline. They are your present, past, and near future customers.

The leads in a funnel are categorized depending on how close they are to buying. People who don’t really know anything about you and are nowhere near ready to buy are called cold leads. But hopefully you can convince them that your product or service has value. If you can, they become a warm lead (they are considering buying from you). The warmer they are, the closer they are to buying.

The path that leads take—from cold, to warm, to hot, to buying—has been compared to the movement of material through a funnel. At first, the material is near the top, then it moves slowly down until it finally reaches the goal (e.g. the inside of a bottle).

And that’s the idea behind a sales funnel. When someone first hears about you, they are near the top of the funnel, still far from your end goal (a sale). The more they learn and like about you and your services, the closer they move to the bottom of the funnel. And, just like real funnels, sales funnels have less room the further down you go. What that really means is that there are fewer leads near the bottom than there are at the top.

A typical sales funnel has lots of cold leads (at the top of the funnel), fewer warm ones (middle of the funnel) and still fewer hot leads (bottom of the funnel). That’s because not every lead is going to end up buying. As they learn more about you (and perhaps your competitors) some leads will leave your funnel (not interested in your product or service). In fact, the majority will fall into that category. But some will be interested, and a portion of those will buy.

How do you move leads down the funnel?

The whole point of any marketing effort is to find new, cold leads, and then turn them into hot leads.

The traditional way to do that is to talk to them. A salesperson might contact a lead on several occasions, each time giving them more information and building a stronger connection. What the salesperson says at any given point depends on how far down the sales funnel the lead is—you wouldn’t say the same thing to a cold lead that you would to a hot lead.

But this is the era of the internet, and so we need to do things a bit differently. Instead of contact points being verbal and between lead and salesperson, our contacts are now more often between a lead and a computer screen. Not that person-to-person contact is gone, but most people nowadays find out about a business by reading its web page.

That means that much of the journey through the sales funnel takes place online. People are learning about you from what is on your website, your Facebook business page, your LinkedIn profile, or maybe in your e-newsletter. And that means your approach needs to change—you have to adapt to an online sales funnel.

But, whether your funnel is in person or online, the main steps are the same. In fact, there is a fairly set process for turning leads into buyers. It’s referred to as AIDA, which stands for:

• Attention

• Interest      

• Desire

• Action

Those are the 4 steps that you need to take to turn a new lead into buyer. Let’s take a closer look at each of them, focusing on how each works on the internet.

Attention

People can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist, so you need a way to get their attention—to make them aware of your business and its services. Today, this is usually done by having some type of online advertising (not necessarily paid!)

Here are some examples of online advertising.

• Creating a Facebook or LinkedIn post that gets shared

• Hosting a free webinar/workshop

• Running a paid ad

• Running an online contest

• Giving away a freebie (eg: downloadable guide, temporary software trial, etc.)

Leads you get from activities such as these are typically considered to be cold, so will be at the top of your funnel.

Interest
Now that people know you exist, you want to give them enough information to pique their interest. You do this by showing them something that builds interest and makes them want to find out more. Ideally, what you want to achieve is to get them to go from just looking at your website to interacting with it (e.g. by clicking on something, or reading something). There are a number of ways this can be done.

• Show an interesting/fun video (interaction: the visitor clicks on the play button)

• Have captivating titles on your blog posts (interaction: the visitor clicks on the “Read more” button and then reads the article)

• Advertise a sale (right on your own site, it’s free that way! -- interaction: visitor clicks on the ad to learn more)

• Give something away for free (usually information -- interaction: visitor clicks on a button that says e.g. “Download now” and is then asked to provide their email address, after which the free item is automatically sent to their inbox).

Those are just some of the ways you can build interest and get people to interact with your website. The last item in the list, giving away something for free, is an especially prized way to build interest because you also get their email address. Having a lead’s email address is the basis for the next step.

Desire

Once you have a lead’s email address, you want to show them how your product or service will benefit them. Because you are giving them a lot more information, this is also sometimes called the detail step. At this stage, you really begin nurturing the lead.

Nurturing is about letting the lead really get to know you and what you can do. The most common way for service businesses to do that online is to give something away for free (informative blog articles, interesting Facebook posts, helpful guides, videos, checklists, newsletters, e-books, etc.).

Why do you need to do this? Because you want to build trust. As you share information, you are demonstrating that you are knowledgeable and helpful. You are also showing your leads how your products or services can help them. Finally, you are also giving them a glimpse of your personality and what it would be like to work with you. Done right, nurturing will build their trust, and that will make them more likely to buy from you.

Action

The final step is asking the reader to take some action, often to purchase something. It’s not enough to talk about your products or services, you have to actively invite your leads to buy. There are different ways to approach this, but they all boil down to presenting an offer and asking the lead to take you up on it.

How do you do that online? You use what are known as call to action buttons (CTAs for short). Those are the little coloured buttons you see on websites that ask you to “Buy now” or “Download the guide”.

Such buttons invite the visitor to take some action. Some of my clients are initially reluctant to use this tactic, but you really need to—call to action buttons are the standard way to close a deal online.

Summary

No matter what industry you are in, your core task is to move your leads down the sales funnel. I’ve given you an overview of how to do that using AIDA, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I highly recommend you spend some more time learning about the topic because a well-managed sales funnel is central to any business: it serves as a plan for turning leads into buyers.

If you don’t take active steps to guide your leads from “cold” to “hot”, then they will stay cold. So take the time to learn more about funnels and the steps involved in them. It’ll be worth your effort.


Cheers,
Tim
Helping you engineer the business of you