5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Sales Funnel Now

Discussions Include:

• What is a sales funnel?
• Who needs to have a sales funnel
• The end goal of a sales funnel - SALES
• Tips for improving the efficiency of a sales funnel

The Hangout:

Creative Chat Cafe host, Zef Zan, joins regular co-host, Kenya Halliburton to discuss an important marketing topic: "5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Sales Funnel Now."

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The Conversation:

ZEF: Every business should have a sales funnel - not tomorrow, but TODAY! A sales funnel usually describes the sales process from initial contact to final sale. Not only is having a sales funnel important, but understanding the details of the sales funnel is just as important. Know what's causing strengths or weaknesses, or even what are the changes versus last year. A classic sales funnel should include leads and sales generation; a good addition would also be to measure repeat clients and customers.

I have only mentioned a little bit about the sales funnel, but Kenya, you help your clients build their sales funnel on a regular basis, maybe you can explain a little bit more about what a sales funnel is and who needs to have one?

KENYA: A sales funnel is simply how you turn your leads into customers. It's a plan that allows someone to become aware of your company, learn about it, and make a decision on whether or not to buy. It's about capturing attention, filtering, and then isolating the customers with who you should be spending most of your time. The sales funnel really is the key to a successful internet business - or any business, for that matter. All businesses should have a sales funnel in place to help them turn leads into customers, but not many people teach the funnel. What you get is a lot of people teaching different pieces of the funnel, but the elements don't work effectively if at all outside of the funnel. This is why I believe so many people struggle to build profitable businesses online.

ZEF: In addition to what Kenya mentioned earlier, here are some basic mechanics of the sales funnel:

• In the process of pursuing a sales opportunity, you essentially work to remove barriers to the sale. Barriers can include uncertainties about your product's fit and value, lack of budget, or most importantly, what is the customer's personal buying process?
• When you remove a barrier, the opportunity moves to the next stage

Kenya, since we are talking about the customer buying process, what do you think is the biggest determining factor of why they buy from us?

KENYA: I think each business needs to do the work to make sure that they understand the client's needs. A lot of businesses give things away for free to generate leads and get an opportunity to sell their other products and services. Gone are the days where you can just throw up anything and people are just so excited to get something for free that they are going to part with their email address - they don't do that anymore. Businesses want to put a lot of thought into determining the product offering that is given to customers for free. They need to wow customers from the start. The product must be something that solves the customer's problems now. Customers must understand and perceive that value right off the bat.

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Meet Zef Here!

KENYA HALLIBURTON
KenyaHalliburton.com

"Kenya Halliburton is an online business manager, specializing in digital content creation, content marketing, and social media marketing. She is a creative, innovative, outside the box, forward-thinking web choreographer always looking for new opportunities to position her clients for success"

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Tips & Solutions:

ZEF'S TIPS:

Since your sales funnel ultimately functions through email, it can be automated, which means that once it is set up, you can let it do the heavy lifting for you and generate sales. So here are a few key tips to get you started:

1. Give something free! - In my opinion, this is one of the most important things to do in a sales funnel. If you don't give your audience the opportunity to "test drive" your product/service, how would they know if your product/service would be of value to them? Don't be afraid to give away something of value.

2.   Remove steps that do not work - If a sales opportunity does not move down the funnel, the sale will not happen and the opportunity should be removed - somewhat of a "gap" in the funnel. It is not necessarily bad, but if you want to make sales, you want to focus on the opportunities that are likely to yield results. It is the nature of sales to have to remove an opportunity from your funnel. It does not mean that you will not sell your product, but you should concentrate on opportunities that remain in the funnel.

KENYA'S TIPS:

1.   Sales funnels help you to create cash on demand - You may have heard the statement, "the money is in the list." That is actually partially true. The money is only in a list of ultra-responsive subscribers who are ready, willing, and able to take action on what you have to say and sell.

2.   Sales funnels make the sales process more efficient - Since only qualified buyers get to the end of the funnel, your team doesn't waste time dealing with uninterested prospects who are just kicking tires.

3.   A good sales funnel helps to make your sales process more predictable - You can predict the number of prospects who will, in time, become customers.

4.   Sales funnels make marketing easier - Most of us market blind, we just do what is popular and hope the sales come in. Blind marketing is bad for business. There are a lot of things that you can do to market your business and it can be overwhelming and paralyzing. The funnel helps you choose and test marketing tactic and quickly determine what is working and what is not, so you don't waste time, money, and energy on the wrong things and maximize what does.

5.   Sales funnels free you up to do more of what you love most - By automating your sales funnel to run through email, you allow the funnel to generate sales and pick up the "heavy lifting." By the time customers get to you, they don't need convincing, they are ready to invest.

Inspiration:

This visual representation of a sales funnel can help you realize how to incorporate your brand, marketing strategy, and current sales process into a more organized sales funnel to teach to your employees while leading to the ultimate goal - sales and loyal customers.