Identifying Your Business Sales Funnel, what’s in it?

09 Dec Identifying Your Business Sales Funnel, what’s in it?

It is not always true that all business sales happen the exact same way. There may be a general ‘way’ that a sale gets made, yet how did that ‘way’ occur in the first place? If you don’t already have an idea of when your business’s sales begin and when the sale starts to grow or put MONEY in your pocket, then now is a good time to take a look at this simple sales funnel outline.

A sales funnel simply shows a business owner what happens throughout the entire life of a successful sale. Is the sale born when the customer drive’s by and see your new sign that peaks their interest? Or maybe it takes its first breath when they receive a monthly e-letter that tells them about a new piece of equipment only you have. What is important in any sales funnel is to be able to identify what exactly is happening throughout the life of a sale.

The first sign of life for a sale is when a customer becomes AWARE of your business, product or service. If this age group is not already begun in your business then it is time to make your customers AWARE that you have a solution for their problems or needs. We suggest Blogs. Blogs help bring life to your website and business. Blogs then develop into the next phase of a sales life, and that is INTEREST.

Once a customer is interested, the sale is maturing. At what point does your business notice INTEREST from customers? If you don’t know then we suggest you install lots of call to action buttons on your business website. Call to action buttons can be as simple as adding links on your website that connect to your businesses phone, email, or a map to your location. Call to action information will inspire the INTEREST from your customers to grow into research and then a sale is definitely growing up.

Next after the interest phase is the RESEARCH phase or learning period for the life of a sale. If the INTEREST phase has produced some measurable calls to action, then the sale will enter adulthood and the customer will RESEARCH or evaluate the product or service to see if it is appropriate for their needs. We suggest strategic SEO analysis of your web page bounce rate. This will tell you how long the baby sale is sitting on your web pages. If it is not very long, then the sale is immature and re-evaluating your web page content will help.

Once the customer has finished with research, then the sale will hopefully enter its age of wisdom when it goes into the DECISION phase. Once a customer is deciding if they want to buy or negotiate about your business services, the sale is on the verge of entering the golden age. The DECISION phase is usually face to face or B2C. Here we suggest being really nice!

Finally, the pay day has arrived and your sale is all grown up and moved into your pocket. This is the PURCHASE phase. There are often points for improvement in this phase that can be made by business owners, yet get overlooked because once the money is made, it’s easy to forget exactly how it occurred. Was the transaction timely? Did the customer need help? Simply put, the purchase phase is always brimming with areas that can be improved and then improve sales numbers.

Don’t Forget about the RE-PURCHASE phase. Once a customer buys, we want them to reincarnate the life of another sale and buy again. This phase is the opportunity to test the return on discounts, and offer upsells.