How To Design Sales Funnel – A Quick Guide for Marketers

Whether you are running a small business or leading a multinational conglomerate, you cannot dream to achieve larger business goals without having a proper sales funnel in place. A robust and advanced sales funnel is a dire need for every business that aims to help you grow uninterruptedly and successfully in the market.

It is thus important for every business to understand the concept of the sales funnel in detail so that you can reap maximum benefits through its implementation.

So, let’s begin.

A sales funnel allows companies to visualize each step that a prospect takes to become a customer. There are various steps an individual takes before becoming a customer. Such steps are broadly categorized into various stages that we have explained in detail in subsequent sections.

• You can get a clear idea about what is working and what is not in the sales process.
• It helps you identify the loopholes in the sales process.
• You can get insights into what customers are looking for.
• You can invest your sales and marketing efforts in the right direction.
• You can better influence their decisions with the right messaging.
• Get an idea where prospects drop out and never convert.
• You can segment leads based on their interest level.
• You can close more deals in less time.

There are broadly 6 different sales funnel stages.

Stage 1 – Awareness: Unless your prospects know you exist or sell a solution that they want, they are not likely to even give a thought about you. Executives thus need to build brand awareness at this stage. It can be done using cold calling, email marketing, paid social media campaigns, and many other ways.

Stage 2- Interest: When a prospect responds to your marketing campaign, for example, fills out a form, gives you a call or sends a message, it reflects an interest in your services. It is the responsibility of the executives to respond promptly, smartly, and effectively at this stage to keep the interest alive. A thoughtful interaction at this stage can make a huge difference.

Stage 3 – Evaluation: Not all leads are equally interested in buying your services. But how would you evaluate which leads are highly likely to become customers? Lead Qualification is the answer. Prepare a set of questionnaires, engage with them and understand the interest level of prospects based on BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) and other business-critical factors.

Stage 4 – Engagement: Once a prospect shows deep interest and reflects high chances to buy from you, it is now the time to keep your brand on the top of their minds. Running personalized marketing campaigns is one of the best ways to engage them better. Also, sharing ungated quality content in the forms of White Paper, E-books, Case Studies, etc., can help them understand the uniqueness of your services.

Stage 5- Action: This is the stage where your prospects feel you deserve their money. The decision to buy is made at this stage of the sales funnel.

Stage 6 – Retention: Sales work doesn’t end just after you close the deal. It goes beyond that. You need to continue engaging existing customers so that they can become repeat buyers and prevent them from switching to a competitor. Interesting timely discounts/offers and personalized messages on special days can work better to meet this objective.

1. Know Your Audience:
   Understand who your ideal customers are? What are their business pain points? Expectations? Business goals? The better you understand your customer, the better it will be to position your services.
2. Define Goals:
   What do you want – more leads, newsletter subscriptions, purchases, product demos or something other? Clearly list out your goals, because each goal is different and their metrics for evaluating performances as well.
3. Prepare Offer:
   Offers grab attention and encourage prospects to take action. Therefore, always try to offer something valuable to prospects that interest them. A free trial/e-book or something else can do wonders for your business.
4. Create Landing Pages:
   Make exciting landing pages on your website. It is the place where you can ask for a prospect’s information. Make sure your landing page is filled with captivating content, alluring graphics, and does not contain too many fields in the form.
5. Qualify Leads:
   Make precise guidelines to verify each lead. Filter out the leads that are not a good fit for your company or show no or very less chances of becoming customers. Pass on verified leads only to the sales team for further processing.
6. Nurture Leads:
   Give them something valuable that not just increases awareness but also trust in your brand. The more quality, relevant, and useful information you share, the better it will be to project your brand image as a trusted solution provider.
7. Close the Deal:
   Always try to go an extra mile to close a deal. Adopting a rigid or common sales closing approach may not always help you. Depending upon the deal size and other vital business factors, try to give something extra so that you can close the deal without fail. For example, you could provide a special discount code for a limited period.
8. Keep the Process Going:
   At this stage either your prospect has turned into a customer or simply decided not to make a purchase. In both cases, don’t forget to engage them regularly with personalized marketing campaigns. The ones who became customers will feel valued and others might think to come back to you in the future. Ultimately, brand recall helps!!
9. Optimize Sale Funnel:
   Analyze the results, check which all KPIs you full-filled and which are missed. It will help you know the gaps and exact problem areas in your sales funnel. Careful analysis and pragmatic improvement can help you gain better results in the future.

• HubSpot
• Instapage
• GetResponse
• Systeme.io
• Leadpages
• Landingi
• ActiveCampaign
• ClickFunnels
• Wishpond
• Thrive Suite

1. Leads: The number of contacts shown interest in your services
2. Conversion Rate: How many actually turned into customers (leads won /number of total leads)
3. Acquisition Costs: It includes all the sales and marketing costs associated with a new customer
4. Customer Lifetime Value: Calculate it by dividing customer value (money spent) over the average lifespan of the customer
5. Total Sales: Total value of all invoices in a specific period
6. Cycle Time: How long does it take for a prospect to move from one stage to another? You can get an idea on this by evaluating Cycle Time.
7. Average Deal Size: Total deal amount/number of deals

Creating an effective sales funnel looks challenging but its adoption is vital for the success of a business. You cannot aspire to grow in today’s hyper-competitive business world without embracing an advanced sales funnel. The sooner you build it as per the business needs, the better it will be to sustain and thrive.

Are you facing challenges in getting enough business leads? VSynergize can help. We are a trusted name in the field of lead generation that has helped numerous renowned organizations to grow vertically.

Our sales experts can help you meet your business goals in a timely and cost-effective manner. Contact us at info@vsynergize.com to know more about our services.