The sales process might look easy, but it is not a process that everyone can start one day and achieve success with it. This is a long, complex, and arduous task that will scratch your head at times.
The whole process can be considered a funnel; hence the term sales funnel. It allows you to filter and nurture as many potential customers as possible from the numerous pool of leads coming from the internet.
If you want to boost your lead retention, sales, and conversion rates, you must make yourself conversant with a sales funnel. Furthermore, you don’t want to lag behind your competitors by not putting enough energy into such an important task.
This article outlines the step you can use to move leads and visitors through a sales funnel. Read on for more details.
What is a sales funnel?
Just like its name, a sales funnel is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Each step of the funnel takes the most qualified prospects to the next stage while dropping those not qualified for your business.
This translates to sales funnel model on your side where potential leads go through the process-untouched, contact made, qualified, proposal, negotiation, and finally closing the deal.
Knowing this process helps you understand where the problem lies in your prospecting campaigns. It points to the exact stage where leads walk away and the reasons your current customers moved through the funnel. By Managing your funnel and understanding sales obstacles, you can develop new and more effective strategies to increase conversions.
Steps of moving leads through a sales funnel
- Attract leads.
The basic principle of digital marketing is to attract visitors using content creation. When you create quality content, you will attract interested leads to the funnel. Some commonly used methods of getting leads are through SEO and social media presence.
Remember that social media is not just about throwing random posts here and there. It involves effective listening, asking, and answering questions. The bottom line is to be interactive, engaging, and offering helpful information.
- Do follow-ups and nurture.
So let’s say, you got a visitor on your real estate website searching for a particular service or information. After they have shared their contacts or taken action on the site, the next thing to do is follow up.
Following up, nurturing them, making them feel valued, and inquiring about various requirements they are looking for in their new home could be an effective way to move them through the next funnel stage. Remember, engaging with them after the buyer lead generation is important. It is actually possible to lose leads if you do not follow up aggressively.
However, many a times it isn’t possible for company owners or businesspersons to follow up with the numerous potential leads. Also hiring an in-house team solely for tele calling might stress their pockets, especially when it’s a small business or a startup. In that case, companies might consider hiring any cold calling services that may help convert their potential leads into buyers.
- Score leads.
Congratulations, you have acquired visitors who are interested in your business. However, how will you know how interested they are? Lead scoring is the perfect way to identify where they are in their shopping journey and how well you can guide them through the funnel.
Make buyer’s personas and provide contents and offers according to individual personas. That is, customize your plans according to the data acquired from lead scores.
- Acquire more information.
Once you become familiar with your leads, try to exchange more details about your business and their concerns. Instead of offering a free subscription to your newsletters, optimize your website forms to get more details and information to personalize your services.
Also, do not be rigid on your side; give out more information too. For instance, if you ask them more than ten questions, give them valuable content in return.
- Convert.
Congrats, you have successfully nurtured your leads to the bottom of the sales funnel. It means that your visitors are close to making a purchase. They only need a little added incentive. Use the data you have collected and craft content wisely.
If you have visitors who are confused and have not decided whether to make a purchase or not, you can offer them more incentives to encourage them to close the deal and become buying clients. The incentive may include free shipping, extended warranty, or money-back guarantee if they don’t like the product or service.
Finally, do not forget to thank them. If you need to keep them as your clients, you must constantly nurture them and build a lasting relationship.
Conclusions
Now that you have mastered the art of sales funnel through the steps discussed in this article, you can successfully move leads and visitors down the funnel. And you can confidently say you know the sales funnel, how to apply it, and the benefits it can bring to your business.
