What is a sales funnel?

1. A sales funnel is a graphical depiction of the progress of customers from stage to stage in the commercial work with these customers.

   It's called a funnel because the largest number contact with customers is provided at the first stage. Less - on the next, even less - on the third, and so on. There is always a gap from stage to stage. At best, you can make it so that there will be almost no dropouts. But wait that after a certain stage there will be additional clients, with whom we have not worked in any way before, it would be naive.

   As a result, if we graphically depict that in a month our sales department made 5800 first calls, held 620 first meetings, then made 1240 follow-up calls, held 980 follow-up meetings...

2. What is really more important than a sales funnel is a table in which statistics are entered commercial work your sales managers. Broken down by key stages of working with clients. This document actually reflects the sales funnel in numerical, quantitative terms.

   This document is called "Statistics of commercial work" or "Sales funnel in Excel"

Sales funnel in Excel. Sales funnel example

Sales funnel in Excel. Sales funnel example.

This is what commercial work statistics in Excel might look like in practice.

Please note that for each working day of the week (usually five), the number of lines is equal to the number of employees and managers in the sales department. Managers themselves, along with subordinates, enter their results of commercial work into the same statistics. Moreover, the results of managers, the intensity of their work should be a positive example for ordinary employees of the department.

A real field commander who works with clients himself, sells a lot, squeezes deals for his subordinates and is a worthy example for them.

Conduct an express audit of the sales department on your own according to 23 criteria and identify sales growth points!

Conduct an audit

Sales funnel stages

We have given an example above finished form funnels in Excel for that style of sales when employees make appointments for themselves, go to them themselves. And basically, key negotiations are held just at these meetings on the road to clients.

Of course, you can invite clients to negotiations in your office or meet with them on neutral territory. This is no less effective, although it requires a slightly higher qualification of sales managers.

Now let's look at the stages of the sales funnel, if the commercial work is organized differently.

When creating a sales funnel and further statistics forms in excel, you need to understand:

• The logic of how sales are made in your company;
• How to break down these sales into key stages;
• What work intensity standards can be set.

Moreover, who said that all employees of your company conduct sales in the same style? On the contrary, different commercial divisions of your company can build work with clients in completely different ways.

Obviously, the sales funnel for those who negotiate with an emphasis on personal visits to customers in their city will be different from the funnel for those who will work with the incoming flow of customer requests. The flow of requests is formed thanks to advertising, marketing, PR and the reputation of your company. Also, the funnel will be different for those who work in remote cities and countries, mainly conduct mass remote sales. If necessary, supplementing it with more serious negotiations conducted via Skype.

Consider what the stages of the sales funnel can be for the last option:

1. First (cold) call, access to a key person;
2. There is an interest (a potential client in what your company can offer him);
3. Repeated call;
4. Skype consultation scheduled;
5. Conducted a Skype consultation;
6. Proposals prepared;
7. Contracts signed;
8. Payments received (number and amount).

What is a sales funnel for?

1. Understanding the situation.

To understand where the effectiveness of your sales department or individual sales managers is declining. You can understand this by looking at what stage there are strong losses, and lost profits are formed.

2. Control.

Our goal is to constantly monitor what the intensity of work is, whether employees really make a sufficient number of calls and meetings with clients.

Inbound sales funnel

When we talk about selling on the incoming flow, it is silly to say that the manager is to blame for the small number of initial contacts with the client. The number of these primary contacts does not really depend on him. How many requests or requests generated by marketing, advertising, PR, events, how many requests you send to him for processing, he will process as many as possible.

Of course, there is a possibility that it simply will not process some of these requests. But this is already a very unfortunate case. In a normal situation, when this is revealed, such an employee will be quickly fired.

And if, nevertheless, managers process all requests, then it turns out that the only question is how effectively he can turn these requests into sales, or how large amounts he can sell. Therefore, we can talk about the efficiency of processing the incoming stream. But the factor itself, how many of these requests will arrive, is not provided by the manager.

Sales funnel in an active sales force

Quite another thing - active sales. Here, you usually don’t have to wait for freebies in the form of ready-made requests and customer requests. And professional sales managers who are actively engaged in corporate sales must be able to conduct sales in their own strength.

They provide primary contacts with clients, search and attraction of clients.

How many clients will they reach? How many will have personal contact? With whom then will they be able to enter into serious negotiations? Then it depends on how many sales you can make and earn afterwards.

But the work of active corporate sales is hard, nervous, and in places frankly vile work. Therefore, there may not be a desire to work at full capacity. That is why the sales funnel is so necessary, because with its help you control managers. But, in order for it to work, it is necessary to establish standards for employees.

I would recommend that you set such standards and control them. Here is an example, given that sales are conducted mainly with an emphasis on face-to-face meetings with customers, meetings take place in different areas of the same city where the sales department is based, and the duration of one meeting can be from 30 minutes to 2 hours, an average of an hour .

The entire sales team must ensure that these targets are met day in and day out. Sales managers ensure this by their regular administrative influence on subordinates. Therefore, both the sales funnel and the regulations are dead without strong regular management.

Can I do a better job than filling it out?

Managers must fill out the sales funnel and keep it up to date. And that's why.

When a manager knows how many actions he completed during the previous working day, it will take him only 10-20 seconds to complete the corresponding line in the sales funnel at the end of that day.

If he left in the evening for a meeting with clients and has not returned to the office, in the same way he can fill out this line the next business day in the morning. Before the start of the morning operative in the sales department.

In fact, it is very important for us that the manager exercises self-control over his work. Tracking how much commercial work it provides. How many actions he has already done in the morning. And how much effort he still has to make in order to meet and exceed the required standards by the evening.

If the manager does not constantly monitor this during the day, the managerial burden on the sales manager will increase significantly. Therefore, it is even more important not that the manager himself fills in the statistics of commercial work, but that he constantly controls his intensity of commercial work for this.

Automatic funnel in CRM

At this point, many will say: why keep statistics of commercial work on paper? We use an excellent CRM system, which itself shows the intensity of commercial work. Again, this indicates a misunderstanding of the specifics of commercial work, such as it can be. But, it is worth noting that among all the solutions for automating the sales funnel, there are really those that can help.

What can be fined for sales managers?

If he is in work time called Brazil or Thailand and talked for half an hour on an unknown number that is not reflected in your CRM system in any way, then this is a reason for litigation. I do not rule out that you want to deduct the cost of this call from the salary of this employee ten times. By the way, many IT control systems also allow recording calls.

If you are already so interested in what this strange call was, maybe you will even listen to how he cooed with a swarthy mulatto from Brazil or a charming person. Nothing human, of course, is alien to us. But it's still not good to make such calls during business hours and at the company's expense, isn't it?

As an honest person, I could wait until the end of the working day. And call, at least through the working Internet, from your cell phone, using IT-telephony. It would cost him a few tens of cents. But it would be correct. And not at your company's expense.

As such, IT controls can be quite useful for really understanding how hard employees are working. And are they really doing business?

Why is my sales funnel not working?

It's time to return to that important principle that no matter how wonderful documents, technologies and standards you develop and offer employees to use, employees can miss all your calls between their ears.

And filling in the statistics of commercial work is, of course, an unpleasant duty. Because either they really need to fulfill decent standards for the intensity of commercial work, or lie when filling out statistics. Or fill in the statistics so that it will be seen that they are idle most of the time.

By itself, the sales funnel or statistics of commercial work will not be able to give you any decent result without a strict regular sales management built in the sales department. To do this, according to our technology, it is necessary to regularly carry out 13 management activities.

Moreover, to effectively manage a professional sales team, one sales manager is not enough. Here you need at least two sales managers working in the hierarchy. For example, the commercial director and the head of the sales department. Or the head of the sales department and his deputy.

Even if you will:

• collect data on the intensity of the work of employees in the statistics of commercial work, and thus see the sales funnel
• set business performance standards and expect employees to adhere to those standards
• build strong regular management
• there will be 2 or more managers in the sales department who will provide regular management
• managers will set a worthy personal example to subordinates on the intensity of commercial work every day, and personally record these results in commercial work statistics

All this is still not enough to build a truly efficient work sales department.

All of the above must be added:

• effective recruitment techniques
• regular competitions on this technology
• adaptation after each competition, including trainings on sales and on the specifics of your product
• regular in-house trainings
• mentoring
• developing required documents, technologies and standards on the basis of which the sales department is built, and training employees in their application.

One of the most important such documents is the salary order for sales managers. In fact, the salary order and the statistics of commercial work are the two key documents necessary to be able to build effective management sales.

The total number of documents required for the organization professional department sales, can be up to 32 kinds of paper documents. Plus a professional CRM system.

© Konstantin Baksht, CEO Baksht Consulting Group.

The best way to quickly master and implement the technology of building a sales department is to attend K. Baksht's sales management training "Sales System".

What is a sales funnel - 6 stages of funnel formation + 5 key points.

Every new business owner should know what is a sales funnel.

This is one of the main business tools that allows you to succeed in.

What is a funnel and what does it include?

How to analyze your business?

What is a sales funnel: concept and structure

The concept of "sales funnel" is conceptual in marketing, and means, first of all, the path that the consumer goes through when making a purchase.

This includes attracting attention, making a purchasing decision, and directly purchasing a product or service.

Knowledge of the main stages and principles of the funnel is necessary for businessmen who wish to raise their business to new level and attract as many consumers of goods and services as possible.

Today there is a situation where the quantity of some things in many respects exceeds demand.

To sell them, you have to organize various receptions, make plans, pay attention to advertising, an attractive description of production products on sites on the Internet.

Before buying, the consumer goes through four stages:

1. Capturing attention with ads or offers.
2. Warming up interest.
3. The desire to receive the offered product and use it.
4. An action is a visit to a store or website to make a purchase.

The main goal of the seller is to transform the initial interest and strong desire to purchase the offered item or service.

You can do this by applying methods that correspond to each stage of the sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel: stages

A manager involved in attracting people, as well as distributing goods and services, must know the main six stages of a sales funnel.

6 stages of the sales funnel:

Entering into the database and creating an interesting trade offer.

Before you start calling potential buyers, you need to form a base consisting of at least 50-100 people.

This is not much, since out of this number of people no more than 5 will agree to a meeting.

Identification of the decision maker.

During the first call, the sales manager should find out the name of the person responsible for making the purchase decision.

Getting the necessary information.

At this stage, it is necessary to enter into a dialogue with the person who makes the purchase decision and interest him, while obtaining the information necessary to draw up a purchase offer.

You should be prepared for the fact that the buyer may begin to express his objections to the purchase, and at this moment all questions should be answered, persuaded and interested in the offer.

Meeting scheduling.

During the meeting, a product presentation is often made.

More often than not, however, the decision maker cannot meet on the day of the call because they want to know more information.

Meeting confirmation.

The day before the appointment, you should call the consumer and remind him of it.

Meeting, presentation and sale.

Based on the data received during a telephone conversation, it is necessary to actively involve the buyer in the conversation and interest him in the offer.

After the transaction, thank you for the purchase.

Considering the steps, you can answer the question: what is a sales funnel.

First of all, it is a well-planned strategy to attract the persuasion of a person to make a purchase.

The main principle of the sales funnel is that the more people you call and consult, the more direct customers and consumers will appear.

Out of a hundred people, up to 5 people agree to a deal.

By calling 200 people, you can increase the number of successful transactions to 10.

Sales funnel scripts

A script is a scenario that a manager or administrator of an online store must act on in order to succeed.

The script is drawn up on a piece of paper and laid out in a conspicuous place for convenience.

There are two commonly known types of scripts:

1. For an incoming call.
2. For an outgoing call.

The manager must clearly understand the differences in conducting an incoming and outgoing telephone conversation.

In the first case, you should introduce yourself, listen to the caller's question, and answer it in as much detail as possible.

If the call comes on behalf of the company, you should, first of all, do not forget to clarify whether the person can talk at the moment.

Many do not comply with this norm of etiquette and only cause irritation to people.

What is a sales funnel and why is it important?

Many underestimate the importance of the sales funnel and as a result have poor sales performance.

Some managers prefer to find people in other ways, however, direct, cold calls, the best option, which is guaranteed to give a certain amount of buyers.

Key benefits of a sales funnel:

• Definition target audience.
• Competent construction and analysis of the process of attracting customers.
• Identification and elimination of weaknesses in the activities of the company as a whole.
• Calculation of the conversion of each stage of the funnel.
• Analysis and evaluation of business performance in general.

With the help of the correct construction of business processes and taking into account the action of the sales funnel, it is possible to increase the efficiency of the company several times.

How to build a sales funnel?

He personally should be interested in attracting more customers, which is possible if the employee's salary is made up of the official part and interest.

You need to draw up a plan and attract customers based on the stages of the sales funnel.

Consider the basic rules for using a funnel:

In a conspicuous place is a sheet with telephone conversation templates.

The template should contain options for solving any situations, the correct answers in case of doubt of the client and in case of refusal to purchase.

• A list is being made potential clients and those who agreed to a personal meeting and discussion of the proposed product.
• When making a call, be sure to introduce yourself and ask if the person can spare five minutes of their time.
• Try to get as accurate a yes or no answer as possible.
• If the client has agreed, you should thank him for the conversation and enter the number, along with the full name, into the database of real clients.

You need to fill the sales funnel regularly, only Full time job will achieve high results.

A competent sales manager should monitor the filling of databases: general list potential customers and those who agreed to make a purchase.

Each agreed client in the database should be recorded in a separate column.

The full name, convenient time for a call and the main wishes of the client to the purchased goods and services are attached.

About the sales funnel and its efficient use- detailed in the video:

The funnel can also be used to:

Estimates of the company's sales dynamics.

Using the funnel, it is very convenient to compare performance indicators for the current and previous months.

Employee performance checks.

The director of the company must clearly see that 100 people were called, of which 5 agreed.

If an employee claims that he called 500 people, but only three people purchased the goods, it can be concluded that the job duties were not properly performed.

Sales forecast for the coming months.

According to the results of sales and customer calls in the first days of the month, we can conclude that the measures taken will continue to be effective.

Every employee who makes cold calls should understand what is a sales funnel and strive to increase the positive dynamics.

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Today I want to consider a very important concept for business, which among marketers is called sales funnel. After reading this publication, you will know what a sales funnel is, how you can visualize it, why it is necessary, what stages it includes, what is working with clients at each stage, and how to maximize conversion, that is, “ throughput” of this funnel. I think that it will be useful for absolutely every entrepreneur to know this, and for everyone else for general development.

What is a sales funnel?

Let's start with the concept. A sales funnel is one of the key, conceptual concepts that came to us from Western marketers. In the original, on English language this term can be found in several variants: “purchase funnel”, “sales funnel” or “sales pipeline”.

A sales funnel is an approximate path that a client of a company overcomes from the moment of the first interest in a product or service to the moment of making a purchase.

Why a funnel? Because not every potential buyer becomes a client of the company and makes a purchase. All of them go through several stages of sales, at each of which some part of the buyers is eliminated, thus, as it were, a funnel is formed into which a large flow of potential customers “flows in”, and a small number of real ones “flow out”.

In marketing theory, a sales funnel is a list of stages of interaction between a company and a client, each of these stages is studied in order to maximize conversion: the percentage of those people who go through all the stages and become real customers, and even better - adherents of the company.

The main goal of the company's management and marketers is to maximize the sales funnel from the bottom, that is, to make sure that as many potential customers as possible become real.

Schematically, a sales funnel can be depicted as follows:

On the left, I have provided approximate numbers showing the decrease in the number of people passing through the funnel at each stage. These figures, as well as the stages themselves, can be different, depending on how competently the marketing strategy companies and business sectors. The number of stages can also be different, but the essence is always the same: to make a client out of a potential buyer, and even better, an adherent.

Due to the popularity of the sales funnel, today there are various programs and excel spreadsheets that help to create and maintain it. Many of them can be downloaded freely on the Internet.

Sales funnel conversion.

The main goal of compiling and maintaining a sales funnel is to increase conversion, that is, to expand this funnel downwards.

Sales funnel conversion is the percentage of people who make a purchase out of the total number of potential customers. Let's look at how to calculate conversion using an example.

The sales funnel is the main tool that clearly demonstrates the state of efficiency of the business process in the company.

The first thing to do in order to build it is to describe the existing business process in stages, that is, the steps that lead the seller to a deal. For example, a business process might look like this:

1. cold call/ application from the site
2. preparing and sending a commercial offer
3. meeting / follow-up call / on-site presentation
4. signing an agreement
5. invoicing
6. payment

The more transparent and optimally short this chain is, the better.

Optimality can be achieved by such a tool as a working day card for each employee. Filling it out makes it possible to track everything that sellers are doing and how much time they spend on it.

After analyzing the data received, start removing redundant stages, moving unusual functions outside the department, and dismissing negligent employees.

After the process is optimized, make adjustments to the CRM system, getting rid of unnecessary statuses there. You do not have ? Start choosing and implementing it, customizing it for your reference business process. After that, based on the statistics "incoming" in CRM, you can build a sales funnel.

The funnel itself will visually look like ... a funnel, an inverted pyramid. Its wide “throat” indicates the number of leads entering the company. The output is the number of payments from buyers. At the same time, it should be divided horizontally into "layers" - the stages of the business process described above.

The funnel can track how quantitative indicators, which are transformed downward at each stage, and such a critical parameter - conversion, that is, the proportion of leads that have passed to the next stage.

The conversion is measured both in relation to the previous stages, and represents the total percentage payments to the number of determined customers (who paid or answered with a firm refusal).

Using this tool allows you to see several problems.

1. You are not working with your audience, or marketing cannot correctly formulate the benefits of the product when subscribers, visitors, disappear already at the first stage.

2. You give buyers too much time to think and do not use acceleration techniques when customers fall off at the final stage.

3. Some employees lack skill or diligence when personal sales funnels are too different for a standard business process.

Sales funnel: 7 slices

Sales funnel: 5 principles of analysis

Principle 1. Expand the walls of the funnel and increase its throughput. That is, as many leads as possible should enter each stage.

Principle 2. Calculate the conversion correctly. Not always an increase in the incoming flow contributes. Therefore, simultaneously improve the conversion of each stage of the funnel.

Principle 3: Start by correcting the most problematic step. This is the stage where you lose the most customers.

Principle 4. Calculate the most converting target groups, products, and direct the efforts of managers and marketers to them.

Principle 5. Each client must go through each stage. He should not skip any stages.

Sales funnel: 4 main mistakes

Mistake 1: creating unnecessary stages in the funnel. When building funnels, you need to understand which stages are acceptable and which should not be. The “extra” stages of the transaction, and, accordingly, the funnel, include the following statuses for customers:

• "thinks";
• "in progress";
• "in work";
• "clients for later";
• "deferred".

These statuses do not carry any information load. Give them up.

Mistake 2: Keeping customers in the same stage of the funnel. This is often the result of a previous mistake, because in the above stages you have a large number of potential buyers who do not move any further along the funnel.

And the seller, day after day, week after week, can report this client as a potential deal. The task of the head of the department is to identify in time those who will not buy your product, and not waste time on them.

Mistake 3: Create multiple duplicate stages in your funnel. For example, in some companies, the funnel contains the following stages: contract approval - contract in development - contract with the client. It's practically the same stage. Such a section only introduces confusion and creates a loss of working time for employees.

Mistake 4: returning the lead to the top stage. It should be remembered that the client's movement occurs only in one direction - towards the closing of the transaction. The lead cannot be returned to the previous stage.

If in fact this happens due to some force majeure circumstances (change of decision maker, for example), then the old transaction is closed and a new one is opened. Otherwise, the conversion will be calculated incorrectly, and, as a result, incorrect ones will be accepted. management decisions.

Sales funnel: tools to increase conversion

Now, to see how each customer moves through the funnel, count its conversion. It is this indicator that helps to evaluate the result of the work of the entire department.

Funnel Conversion = Number of Positively Closed Deals / Total Closed Deals

Compare the NPS indicator with yourself with yourself in different periods or by market. For example, a good NPS in the training market starts at 40%, NPS Oops - 82%.

Sales funnel: follow the stages

The sales funnel displays all the stages at which the client finds himself from the moment when the offer was announced to him until the moment of purchase. Building a sales funnel is directly related to increasing profits in any company.

You always determine, based on the characteristics of your business, which the way will pass counterparty. The sales funnel might look like this.

Sales funnel:

• incoming calls;
• identifying needs;
• presentation, meeting;
• Commercial offer;
• agreement;
• payment;

Clearly defined stages allow you to understand with what conversion potential buyers move down to the “Payment” stage.

It becomes noticeable at what point it is lost, where the conversion of a lead into a buyer begins to suffer.

• Trade duration
• Bandwidth
• The duration of each stage
• Average transaction amount
• Number of incoming contacts
• Number of closed contacts

Sales funnel: how to identify bottlenecks using the bottle neck method

The bottle neck technology allows you to competently interact with the “narrow” problematic stages of the sales funnel. In order to find out if you are having trouble converting your funnel from stage to stage, pay attention to the following important points:

• whether too many leads are accumulating at one of the stages of the sales funnel;
• whether programs have been launched to improve customer touch points;
• whether the consolidated collection of data on transitions from stage to stage is functioning;
• whether the effectiveness of the transition of counterparties from stage to stage was assessed in the context of sellers;
• whether business processes aimed at eliminating the difficulties of individual stages are fully developed;
• whether the work of employees is evaluated according to the skill model through development sheets;
• whether a system of trainings has been organized to work with the “narrow” stages of the sales funnel;
• whether the analysis system for the transition of a potential buyer from stage to stage is set up;
• whether the qualification of leads is carried out in accordance with the portrait of the target audience;
• whether the most effective sales channels have been identified.

Sales funnel- a well-known marketing tool for planning and evaluating business performance. This is the path that the average consumer took from the moment they drew their attention to the offer to the moment they made a purchase.

Along this path, your first priority is to take into account all the whims of the client that arise at each stage, as well as his motives, reactions, questions and objections. Learn to adapt, sell softly, don't be pushy. Sales today is a real art, which is comprehended gradually.

Generation Z, i.e. people born in the mid-nineties, do not know what it is like to stand in long lines to buy a certain product. Today, many people look for and buy goods via the Internet.

Gone are the days when simple recommendations were enough, when a person simply came to the store and made a purchase. And the seller did not bother where the client came from, what prompted him to purchase the goods, and whether he would look again. Why? No competition! The current state of affairs, when supply exceeds demand, is in the hands of only customers.

New realities dictate new rules, and in order to be "on horseback" you need to pay attention to every stage of interaction with your customers. A potential consumer needs to be known "in person", to study interests, behavior before making a purchase or refusal. Knowing all these aspects, you can multiply your profits. And it doesn't matter if it's a grocery store in a village in Oman or an online store selling goods via the Internet - the effectiveness has been proven in both cases.

Back in 1898, the famous marketing theorist Elias Lewis voiced the concept of the “acquisition funnel”, which describes the psychology of the client.

At the moment, such a concept as a "sales funnel" in marketing is considered one of the fundamental ones.

How to set up a sales funnel, i.e. make it so that the client “plunges” into it and exits it as a buyer?

Three main factors influence the number of possible consumers:

• ways to promote a product or service (advertising campaign, reliability of information, visual demonstration);
• correct target audience segmentation;
• price and marketing policy (proper quality goods, the availability of discounts, promotions, and other "goodies").

As you can see, in order for a person to move into the status of a buyer, he needs to convey how your product or service is better than the rest.

What is an online sales funnel?

The effective use of this tool allows you to solve a number of problems that almost every business faces sooner or later:

• there is no clear system of work with consumers;
• lack of understanding of how effectively the marketing department performs its duties;
• there is no competent segmentation of the audience - money down the drain.

What is a sales funnel for? Paradoxically, to INCREASE SALES! It helps to build the logic of working with potential clients, select the right tools for it and search for weak spots in system.

What is a sales funnel conversion and how to calculate it

This is an excellent tool in the hands of a skilled marketer, through which you can conduct a thorough analysis of the productivity of both individual employees and the entire sales department or site.

The sales funnel allows you to find out at what stages of sales the largest number of potential buyers is eliminated, and quickly make changes to the product sales strategy. It acts as a kind of filter element, providing detailed information about weaknesses trade.

By analyzing the performance indicators of each stage, you can calculate the conversion of the sales funnel. This parameter is measured in percentage.

For example:

What do we see from the example? The conversion at the first stage is 800 people (interested) / 10,000 people (potentially interested) * 100% = 8%.

Total funnel conversion: 20 (customers) / 10,000 (viewers) * 100% = 0.2%.

In online marketing and "real" trading, the following purchase options affect conversion:

• availability of free delivery service;
• the ability to add goods to the basket;
• consulting support;
• personalization (finding out the personal data of the client and contacting him specifically);
• providing support via chat or call during the conclusion of the transaction.

Some Internet entrepreneurs invest crazy money in increasing traffic, but they do not receive the expected profit. In some cases, attracting visitors is absolutely unjustified, as it exceeds the final profit from sales on a web project.

To increase conversion, you need to segment the target audience.

For example:

If you trade in expensive foreign cars, most likely you need to focus on wealthy men over 30 years old. In the case when you offer shugaring services, then you need to focus on young girls from 18 years old.

If attraction methods are ineffective, you should think about optimizing them. It is possible that advertising does not give a return, and simply eats up the budget.

So we got to such an indicator as Cost Per Millennium (CPM).

Among the most effective methods for increasing conversions is A/B testing - a powerful marketing tool that allows you to evaluate and compare the quantitative performance of two versions of a web page, as well as compare them with each other.

Sales funnel stages

In general, there are no specific rules and standards for building a sales funnel. Everything revolves around a specific situation. The funnel of the classic sales department and the SMM department will be very different, but some common features are still visible - they are based on the same ageless AIDA model. The abbreviation stands for Attention-Interest-Desire-Action or . Let's see how this model works.

To attract attention

How to get the attention of a potential buyer? Think carefully advertising campaign. Let the person be interested in the offer and enter into primary communication with you. At this stage, cold calls, search promotion, contextual advertising or advertising on social media.

USP plays an important role here - a unique trade offer. Such USPs as: “We have the most low prices, high quality and fast delivery" are no longer working.

Give the client what he wants to receive.

USP examples:

By price

• Found cheaper? We will make the price even lower!
• Hurry up to buy before October 21 and get a 30% discount!

By deadline

• We will deliver this product to the address in 2 hours;
• If you did not receive the goods within the agreed time, we are charged 1 hryvnia per minute for waiting.

By quality

• You are not satisfied with the quality of assembly of furniture? - Point out the errors, and we will compensate them;
• Noticed dirt on your car? - The next car wash will be free.

Excitement of interest

At this stage, it is necessary to point out the strengths of the proposal, show that it can solve the client's problems - this will arouse his interest. To be one step ahead, study in detail his need for a product: how he can help him and what he expects from him. Once the bait has been cast and the potential buyer is still lukewarm, provide a solution to their problem. At this stage, your managers usually send a commercial offer. In the case when the client came from the search, the content of the site takes on the main work. Its task is to fully reveal the essence and uniqueness of your offer.

Wish

This stage is followed by negotiating or evaluating the offer. There can be two scenarios here: the manager and the client discuss and agree on a commercial offer together, or the potential buyer himself weighs all the pros and cons. If the final decision is positive and the offer, according to the client, can satisfy his desire, the final stage of the sales funnel begins.

Action

The sales funnel has been created, the client successfully entered it and approached the bottom. Closing the deal, i.e. the final approval and order, is the final stage of the conversion in the funnel. The success of the seller and the marketing system as a whole is determined precisely by the number of closed deals. This is the main performance indicator.

These are four basic stages, each of which can branch into smaller ones. It all depends on the business model, the situation. Some funnels are not complete without "Objection Handling" - making a list of objections that the seller can hear and effectively neutralize. An online sales funnel can consist of stages such as Landing Page Acquisition, Upsells, etc.

How to analyze your sales funnel

We have already dealt with the conversion. To reiterate, this is the number of people who took the targeted action divided by the total number of people who learned about your business, multiplied by 100%. Let's say you contacted 100 potential customers and one of them bought a watch, the total conversion would be 1%.

(8,000 + 15,000 + 25,000) / 3 = UAH 16,000

Don't forget to analyze your funnel! Only a thorough analysis will help determine which stages need to be “repaired”.

Outcome

A sales funnel is a must-have tool for increasing sales, discovering customer acquisition channels, and formulating a business development strategy. Without a clear system, you can’t track at what stage you lose the most customers and why, you can’t adjust your advertising strategy, and it’s very difficult to make sales plans. Building a sales funnel should be mandatory. Otherwise, you will be pointing your finger at the sky.

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