Apply a Sales Funnel so that the online business is successful
If you are engaged in online business or have a business on your website, there’s nothing wrong with studying the theory of Sales Funnel and practicing it so that your sales increase.
What is the Sales Funnel?
Sales Funnel is an easy way to visualize customer trips or commonly called Customer Journey, through your sales process.
This customer’s travel process is common because they realize that they need your product and finally make a purchase. This trip is called Sales Funnel.
This Sales Funnel can describe how each sale starts with many prospective customers, then ends with fewer people who make a purchase.
In practice, the essence of this process is a journey starting from how you invite branded traffic or visitors then get their contacts, change that contact into the prospect of your business until finally convincing them to “close the deal” or transact.
In theory, the Sales Funnel is the key to measuring, managing, predicting, and also includes improving your sales process so that in the end you can close more transactions with customers.
The values of a well-built funnel are those who have the ability to:
- Determining the stages of a clear and consistent Sales Funnel process, which also reflects your customer’s journey and can support the customers at each stage.
- Communicate clearly throughout the sales department, marketing, and other management towards a joint sales vision. Most of the Sales Funnel teams have daily or weekly calls to review how rapid or great progress.
- Forecast the upcoming sales income with a much higher level of accuracy compared to what is done without the stages of a clearer Funnel Sales.
Why should I apply for a Sales Funnel?
According to research David Kirkpatrick published in Marketing Sherpa, related to Sales Funnel, only 50% of the lead marketing were ready to buy directly. While many other customers must be maintained and supported first to help them make a buy or transaction decision.
Getting good results from every potential customer is also a difficult thing. Why? Because 79% of the lead marketing was declared failed when going to the transaction or purchase action. This means many opportunities are lost because potential customers need more support.
To support your customer through the sales process, you need to keep paying attention to the Sales Funnel more thoroughly. Although there may be a lot of care and attention that you provide to increase the funnel itself, there is “leakage” on the funnel that can occur.
The leak is what causes the quality of the quality customer can just leave without making a purchase or transaction.
People in general who have just found your brand for the first time, certainly will not directly purchase because they feel not ready.
Related to that, what you can do is establish communication with the prospective customers and invite them to get to know your company better and know what your product is and how the advantages and benefits are for them.
Even though it is classified as long as the process, they can be interested in your service first before purchasing the product. By identifying and repairing the weakest area in your Funnel Sales, you can ensure that your lead customer can reach a high percentage.
The intended lead customer is the one who is willing to make a purchase and become a customer repeat or loyal customer.
Understand your customer trip
The first step to building your Funnel sales is to understand the process of your customer decision-making, which is often referred to as “customer journey”.
To do this, you must place yourself in the position or state of the customer when you first realize the problems that need to be solved.
Next, consider each stage of the trip they passed to make the decision. This will help you ensure your sales team responds at the right time and in the right way for every customer’s information needs.
Sales Funnel consists of stages intended to reflect how the main steps for making the customer’s journey to make purchases or transact. The number of stages can vary according to the type of business you are running.
Small businesses generally determine as many as 3, 5, or 7 stages in their Funnel sales.
Next, we explain with detail each stage in 5 classic stages:
- Awareness (Awareness)
At this stage, your customers have been aware of the problems they have to finish. Simply put, some people want to play guitar but don’t have guitar skills and take expensive music lessons. Then the person sees your ad that provides online guitar training services with the application.
Advertising is one method you might use to make them aware of your product. This stage is a great volume for your customers’ prospects.
- Searching (Discovery)
In this second stage, your customers realize this is the time to find a solution to their problems and they start looking for more information about your product.
For example, I have found two solutions, the first is to follow the guitar play tutorial on YouTube, the second is looking for a professional tutor and the third is an advertisement offer, which is downloading an online application that provides guitar training stage by step.
The promotion website is one way to allow customers to explore your services further and get quality prospects.
At this stage, there are few customer prospects, because some people have not developed from realizing their problems to explore your product as a potential solution.
So, that person might open your website to find out more and weigh whether it will download the application you have to offer. Make your website as interesting and as possible.
- Evaluation (evaluation)
At the evaluation stage, customers narrow the range of potential solutions to their problems. Customers may discover options based on various considerations including prices, style, and quality.
They may do this by asking for more information through your website or by contacting your sales staff. So, at this stage, the number of your customers’ prospects decreases further, but the opportunity to close sales increases further.
- Specialization (Intent)
In this stage, your customer’s prospect might seriously consider your product, and now contact to ask more detailed questions. What has changed lately is more and more customers have now completed this stage online.
As a result, customers do not feel the need to talk to Sales unless they cannot find the information they need online, both from reviews or websites. At this stage, the number of your customers’ prospects decreases further, but the opportunity to close sales increases further.
- Purchasing (Purchase)
In this final stage, customers have decided which products will be purchased online, or they communicate with your sales team to then complete purchases or transactions. They might also try to negotiate prices or take advantage of promotional offers you provide.
For example, the person has decided to use your application, but that person wants to get the promo you are advertising, for example, “Free Advanced Tutorial”. At this stage, you have the number of smallest potential customers left, but it almost certainly closes sales.
Mapping the Sales Process according to the Customer Travel Stages
After you see your customer’s travel process, let’s see how you can prepare the sales process to direct more customers who complete purchases or transactions. Each stage of the sales process needs to reflect customer trips.
Why? Because your sales process won’t work well if you don’t recognize and respond to every customer’s needs.
- Prospect (Prospect)
Your future customers are aware of your brand, but they don’t know about you at this stage. Communicate the benefits of your brand or another solution is the type of support that will mean to customers at this stage.
Sales can communicate this prospect through direct or networking calls on social events. Marketing may occur by reaching customers through online marketing campaigns.
- Qualification (Qualification)
At this stage, you have appointed customers who have an interest in your product and the ability to pay for it. Customers will likely complete the qualification process online or have talked to someone on your sales team that has qualified.
You must now have basic information stored in your CRM, including the name, position, telephone number, email address, interest, budget authority, and time scale to buy.
- Demonstration (Demonstration)
At this stage, customers explore your solutions (and one or two competitive solutions) in more depth. This is possible because you have given prospective customers complete information, a written proposal, or a demo.
- Negotiation (Negotiation)
At this stage, customers have decided that you might be able to provide the best solution to their problems, so they might ask questions about the price. This might produce discussions with your sales team to negotiate prices and other sales requirements.
- Win / Lose Closure (Closed Won / Lost)
At this stage, the agreement has been won and the transaction takes place. The purpose of relationships with customers is now changing from how to get new customers to keep the customer you have won then how to win new customer references further.
Utilizing the online tool
There is a way to monitor how users interact with your website when they are in the early stages of the funnel. There are online tools that can be used to track your visitor’s web travel.
From the beginning, they entered the website to the endpoint, where they chose to contact your company sales or submit their data through the website (online).
The most popular analysis tool is Google Analytics. By managing the goal analysis on Google Analytics, you can see how many users have visited your website.
This tool allows you to make a “Funnel Visualization Report” which can clearly show how many users click each page on your website.
Google Analytics is also able to show which Page you need to fix. If there are red marks appear on certain pages, you just click to see the details. It could be that the content on your page is very thin or short so that the high level of bounce rate or your purchase chart design is too complicated for the user/visitor.
A tool like that is the perfect starting place to try to analyze the problems that are on your website. In addition, you can also take advantage of the management tool that can make it easier for you to do your duties and collaborate with all teams or departments that take care of your business.
Repair the website along with the content
After you know which part of your website has a weak point, this is the time to improve the “leakage” to increase conversion.
Thanks to Google Analytics, you really can know any problematic page, but you won’t know exactly what the problem is. In finding out the source of the problem, you will spend enough time simplifying the website before displaying it for the sake of attracting visitors.
You can do two ways, namely analyzing the Heat Maps or doing testing with A / B testing. Heat Maps provides info about wherever customers looking and any content that interests them. By using Heat Maps, you can search for new ideas. From writing or images that users view many.
If what they see is not the form of content that can encourage them to the Sales Funnel, it’s time for you to improve the page.
Similar to the A / B testing. What content appears, where the position is on the page, and how it looks an important step to improve the “leakage” that is on your Funnel sales.
Establish communication with contacts
The first thing to note about establishing communication with contacts is that you have to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to contact you. If not, they might feel frustrated, and your reputation can decrease.
That is, you must provide various kinds of contact methods that suit the needs of each customer. It could be by providing aid applications in the App Store. It is very important to guide customers according to their needs.
Establish strong communication between you and your customers can create a lifelong purchase relationship that is beneficial for all parties involved in it. So, try to think about the long term, not in a short time for a lot of time sales.
Maintain every customer is important because very few new customers will be ready to buy from your company. Emphasize how the benefits of the product or solution to the problem they have succeeded.
The best way to build relations with customers is to be friendly, approaching, and respecting them. You can give a little encouragement if needed but it’s not excessive to make your customer perspective irritably.
Finally, when you have succeeded in encouraging clients to transact, you should still maintain good relations. You can regularly ask for their feedback on your products and services. Or, you can also show a small concern that is personal for those sort of giving gifts, promos, or other attractive offers on their birthdays.
Such After Sales Service can direct you to create a customer repeat, which is far more useful because they consistently want to come back to buy more of your products. Not only that, even promoting your brand to friends or other relations.
Conclusion
With this article, you already know what the Sales Funnel is actually and what are stages can be practiced so that your sales increase. Besides that, we also provide some other tips related to Sales Funnel, such as the use of online tools and repairing websites that you can do. Good luck!
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