A sales funnel, also called a purchase funnel, is the visual representation of the customer journey, depicting the sales process from awareness to action. Show The funnel, which is also sometimes referred to as a marketing funnel or revenue funnel, illustrates the idea that every sale begins with a large number of potential customers and ends with a much smaller number of people who actually make a purchase. Why is implementing a sales funnel important?There are several reasons why implementing a sales funnel is important, including the following:
Today, a successful company relies on both sales and marketing to guide the customer through the sales funnel and to build customer loyalty, taking advantage of content marketing, customer data analytics and the two-way communication that social media marketing provides. How the sales funnel worksSales funnel stages will vary by company, but they are generally divided into the following four sections:
How to build a sales funnel for your businessThere are several best practices a business should follow to build a successful sales funnel. These include the following:
Sales funnel metricsCompanies use various metrics to analyze and score leads and prospects during the sales cycle to evaluate the success of their sales teams. Examples of lead-to-revenue management metrics include the following:
Optimizing and managing your sales funnelIn addition to the best practices mentioned above, there are several marketing automation software options that can help businesses get the most out of their sales funnel, including the following:
Some features that are useful in marketing automation and sales funnel software include the following:
In today's age of the customer, the journey a customer takes -- sometimes referred to as the customer lifecycle -- is less likely to be linear. For that reason, some experts prefer a flywheel model, which puts the customer at the center of an organization's marketing efforts. However, unlike a flywheel model, a sales funnel enables a business to be as granular as needed in its efforts to convert a prospect into a sale. In some cases, the flywheel model is preferred to the sales funnel because it is continuous.The goal of a sales funnel is to take prospective customers in and nurture them into true customers. Learn six ways to create a customer experience that helps ensure sales success. |