Why are sales funnels so important?
We make use of the metaphor of a sales funnel (wide at the very top, narrow at the end) to monitor the sales process.
Towards the top of this funnel, you’ve got ‘unqualified prospects’ — the people who you believe may need your service or product, but to whom you’ve never spoken. At the end of this funnel, many delivery and sales steps after, you’ve got those who’ve received the service or product and have also purchased it.
The metaphor of a funnel can be utilized because prospects drop out of different stages of an extended sales process.
Using the sales funnel, and calculating the number of leads at every point of the procedure, you are able to predict the number of prospects who’ll, over time, become clients.
Utilization of the Sales Funnel shows obstacles and dead time, or if they’re an insufficient quantity of leads at any point. This knowledge enables you to decide where sales agents should focus their attention and efforts to help keep sales at the required level and, also, to satisfy targets.
The funnel may also explain where improvements have to be implemented in the sales procedure. These might be as straightforward as introducing extra sales coaching or making certain sales reps put adequate emphasis on each step of the process.
The very first stage in establishing sales funnel reporting would be to brainstorm the sales process together with your sales and marketing people to make certain that it is correct and comprehensive.
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The Front and Back of Sales Funnels
The sales funnel is really a methodical marketing procedure where you systematically qualify your prospects into clients and, additionally, refine them into hyper-responsive clients. Your client base gets smaller as your bottom line increases as you provide more expensive products to your hyper-responsive clients.
The front end may be the most dynamic facet of your sales funnel and the part that needs continuous experimentation. You will find, literally, endless front-end methods, restricted purely by your imagination and resources.
The focus at your front end would be to attract and qualify people who possess an inclination to buy your items further down the sales funnel.
Generally, the qualification happens whenever a person opts in to get something from you. It’s this opt-in stage that turns your everyday web surfer right into a lead, given that they’ve just carried out an action indicating that they, at the very least, possess some desire to have what you’ve got.
There are all types of front-end marketing tools: becoming a member of a contact newsletter, subscribing to a weblog via RSS or email notifications, opting in together with your name and email to download a complimentary report, registering for a totally free online service, or ticking a box to get more information in regards to a product/topic when subscribing to something (co-registration).
The front end involves attracting attention and enticing people into the sales funnel. But, generally, it’s in the back end where, in fact, the profits are created.
Your back end consists of your more expensive items. Essentially, we’re referring to meeting exactly the same demand (inside a niche), just with alternative media. This may include information distributed via audio, visual, live, or privately.
The particular distinction between your front end and the back end is about the kind of customer and the cost paid.
In the back end, all of your clients have traveled through the front end, tried your complimentary materials, bought a basic level service or product, and also have experienced substantial value from what you’ve offered. So much so, that they’re wanting to purchase again from you.
It’s common that only a tiny percent, say 1–2%, of the entire people entering your front end will end up in the back end. That’s ok because that small group is spending a lot of money. While front-end products and services may cost under $100, back-end products are often priced in the hundreds or thousands.
The back end is the main profit source for business since it is stable and predictable and this is the major reason for establishing a back end, to begin with.
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The following are the steps to mastering the sales funnel process;
- Be In-charge of the Buying Process
Internet marketers say that you must sell your own digital products (and, essentially, control the sales funnel) to really profit online.
Thus, you need to control the sales funnel by creating your own digital product and setting up the funnel.
When creating a sales funnel, you really are creating two or more offers, since you need to be able to offer your prospect or customer another offer on top of the original or main offer.
This is usually considered an upsell or a one-time offer (commonly referred to as an OTO).
However, it is now quite common to have a sales funnel where you have far more than just two offers.
You can have anywhere from three to ten or more offers in one funnel, composed of upsells (advanced or more enhanced versions of the main product) and downsells (advanced or more enhanced versions of the main product, but not as advanced or enhanced as the corresponding upsell).
There are really only two rules regarding sales funnels and corresponding upsells and downsells: The one-time offers (i.e. upsells and downsells) relate to the main product offer in some way so that you add more value to the main product offer, and the one-time offers are optional purchases and NOT necessary to enable the main product offer to fulfill the value it
is supposed to be as described in the product’s sales letter.
Thus, you can create a sales funnel composed of several different offers that will enable you to earn profits with each purchase.
2. It All Starts At The Squeeze Page
The very start of your sales funnel needs to begin with the squeeze page. A squeeze page is just a Web page that offers the visitor something of value, such as a report on a specific topic of interest, in return for the person’s contact information (usually the person’s name and email address).
The idea behind the squeeze page is to entice the visitor to willingly give up his/her name and email address so that you can follow up with him/her later with other relevant and useful information so that you can build a relationship with him/her and show that you are an expert in this industry or niche.
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Once the person feels comfortable with you and feels you know this industry or niche well, he/she will be more likely to purchase the offers you recommend to him/her. These offers should consist of your own products, as well as affiliate offers that you endorse.
Of course, as mentioned before, the greatest online profits come from products you own, so you really want your subscribers to become comfortable with you so that they will purchase the offers in your sales funnel.
This is where the bulk of your profits will come from and if you build the relationship properly and don’t abuse their trust or time, it’s certainly possible that they will purchase from you repeatedly whenever you offer a product offer of relevance to them. This is how you can build your online income over time.
Therefore, you need a product that you can offer to your squeeze page visitor for free in order for him/her to be willing to give up his/her contact information. You can either create this product on your own, use outsourcers to create it, and/or use private label rights (PLR)products to create it.
3. Present a Directly-Related PAID Product Deal
After the subscriber has input his/her contact information into your squeeze page, he/she should be taken to a Web page that states that the free report he/she signed up for is on its way to his/her inbox.
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This is the beginning of your relationship with this subscriber; you need to use good email marketing practices in order to build the relationship further and convince the prospect that you are a respected and knowledgeable person in your industry and that the prospect can trust you, the information you provide, and the offers you present.
Research has shown that it takes at least seven contacts with a prospect before he/she is willing to buy a paid offer. This means that you need to make contact with that person at least seven times before you can reasonably expect the person to push the “buy” button on your offer.
Now, some prospects will be willing to purchase before seven contacts are made, some will only be willing to do it after more than seven contacts are made, and some will not be willing to buy period. It varies depending upon the person, his/her way of thinking, and his/her situation.
Still, with virtually all sales that you make, good email marketing practices and building relationships are key to making those sales.
Expecting a prospect to just become a lifelong customer overnight or after one to two emails is very unlikely.
Therefore, you need to provide more valuable information in your follow-up emails after he/she has downloaded your free report.
You need to follow up with him/her to ensure he/she has gotten the report, provide additional information on the problem or issue, and gently hint that the main product offer in your sales funnel is the key to solving the problem or issue in question.
4. This is the Time to Slip in an Upsell or Downsell Offer
Once the prospect has turned into a customer and purchased your main product offer, he/she has entered your sales funnel.
This means that you should be offering the customer an opportunity to “upgrade” his/her order. This is done through a value-enhancing upsell that is related to the main product offer he/she just ordered.
The upsell can be an enhanced version that offers more information if the main product offer was an ebook/audio course/video course or more features if the main product offer was a software program, etc.
The upsell can also be a related offer that provides additional value to the main product offer.
For instance, perhaps your main product offer was a traffic generation course; your upsell could be an email marketing course designed to improve the conversion rates of the traffic you get to your site via the main product offer.
The key with any upsell is to provide additional value to the main product offer the customer just purchased.
The upsell should NOT be a mandatory purchase in order for the main product offer to provide the value it was promised to deliver; that would not only be unethical, but it will damage your reputation because many consumers will look upon that as a dirty marketing tactic because you weren’t forthcoming in what your main product offer needed in order to
provide what you said it would.
Thus, never make the OTOs or upsells mandatory to purchase; the main product offer must provide the value it was intended to provide by itself.
All upsells and downsells must be optional, never mandatory.
5. Set Up Your Autoresponder Follow-Up Sequence
There should be a series of about seven follow-up email messages, with the first one going out right after he/she has sent his contact information (or after he/she has confirmed that contact information by clicking on the confirmation link if you use double opt-in).
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The most convenient and easiest way to do this is to set up the email messages in your autoresponder; that way, when the prospect completes the form or clicks on the confirmation link in the email that is sent to him/her, the email messages will automatically be sent to him/her over a period of days depending on when you scheduled them to be sent.
In that first email message, you should thank him/her for requesting the free report, include a link to download that free report, mention that you will follow up with more relevant information and offers related to the problem/topic/industry, and provide your contact information so that he/she can get in touch with you if he/she has any questions related to
the free report, the problem it touches upon, or anything else.
In subsequent follow-up emails, you should look to build up the relationship by providing more valuable information regarding the problem/issue brought up in the free email report, along with information regarding remedies or solutions to that issue.
You should also include a link to your main product offer’s sales page as a reference for them to consider checking out and purchasing to help them solve the problem or issue in a more comprehensive manner.
6. Performing Through Testing to Ensure that Your Funnel Works
Perfectly
A key mistake many new Internet marketers make is not testing their sales funnel to ensure that it works. Many of these marketers will only find out that their sales funnels are not working as they should from customers or subscribers who are willing to pass along the word that the sales funnel is broken.
While they may eventually find out that the sales funnel is broken and not working properly at some point, those Internet marketers who fail to test it ahead of time lose out on all of those potential profits they could have had if they had just tested the funnel themselves ahead of time.
After all, they have virtually no chance of getting those customers back into the funnel, especially if those offers are one-time offers, as those offers (both upsells and downsells) are only supposed to be shown after the main product offer is purchased. After the customer exits the funnel, they essentially lose the chance to gain more profits from that customer.
7. Launch Your New Product
Once you have confirmed that your sales funnel is working properly as it should and all relevant emails are sent at the appropriate times for each purchase that is made, it’s time to launch your new product!
This means that you should set all prices to the price points you have set for each offer throughout your sales funnel (from the $0 or $0.01 you used to test the funnel).
Once you have done that, you need to start promoting your product via email marketing, forum marketing, social media, blog/newsletter, paid advertising, joint ventures, and more.
The key is to get the word out about your new product and let the world know that the problem or issue they are dealing with can be effectively remedied or solved by your product.
Your product is the key to making their lives less stressful and it is ready to be purchased.
Testimonials are often instrumental in getting people to order your product, as they can alleviate people’s doubts about whether the product will really do what it is expected to do and about whether you are really a legitimate business person and one who can be trusted to provide what you state you will provide.
