How Many People Do You Need In Your Sales Funnel?
Regardless of what kind of business you operate, you need to have a steady stream of sales for your service or product, or you will not be able to continue.
That means every week, and better still, every day, you need to move contacts into your sales funnel and then work them through the process of becoming your paying customers.
But how many people need to be in your funnel to get the sales that will make your business sustainable?
Nobody else can really summarize that for you with a magic formula, but if you set up a reliable and effective process of streaming through your funnel, and you have a realistic budget of projected sales needed, you will soon be able to figure it out for yourself.
What can be said for sure is that you need to start engaging people and drawing them into your funnel from the first day if you want to keep your sales process functioning effectively.
Essentially, the sales funnel is the process by which a person first becomes aware of your company, learns more about it, and then makes a decision on whether or not to buy your product or service.
There are short, fast sales funnels, and longer, more detailed sales funnels, and the trick is to discover what works best for you and your business. Generally speaker, if you are selling consulting services, a longer, slower funnel works best, and if you are selling a product, a shorter, faster-moving one is better.
For the purposes of this discussion, let us focus on a sales funnel for a consulting service.
If you write high-value, captivating content in your blog regularly, you may entice people who want to read it regularly to give you their emails to subscribe to your blog or perhaps a monthly newsletter.
Once they give you their email, they are in your sales funnel.
You need to quickly start to build a relationship. You offer them a free e-book on a subject they have already clearly indicated is interesting to them.
They download your free e-book, so you invite them to share it for free with others. You are showing them you are willing to part with something of value. You are becoming friendly, in a business sense.
You then offer an inexpensive on line course, but one that is intriguing enough to capture their attention. Let’s say that the course costs just $9.99. It’s not a huge investment, and they are starting to like all the things you are writing about and consider them valuable, so they make that little investment.
Your next offering to your funnel clients could be an on-line course plus a book and a workbook. At the end of it, they get one free hour-long consultation with you. The price is higher, $159, but they are getting a lot of value and building an even closer relationship with you.
The hour they spend with you is simply not enough. They want to hire you as a consultant on a new initiative they are planning. You prepare a quote for your services, they accept and they are well and truly established as a genuine client.
Handling leads in your sales funnel until they emerge as clients is not a trick. It is a nurturing process. It is a relationship-building exercise.
It is showing that you are going to be with them and continue to give them value and delight them. Once in with you, they will often stay for years, and that helps you to build a solid foundation for your consulting business.
The important thing is not to get discouraged at how few people who enter your sales funnel actually become your paying clients. For all your efforts, you may get only 5% return of completed sales or even 3%.
Keep checking and adapting your offerings to see how you can improve your percentages.
When you get sales, try to find out which level of your sales funnel pulled the client closer and made them want to be your long-term customer. Then look at the kind of client who is emerging from your sales funnel: Is this the client you want?
Don’t worry too much about those who don’t engage with you: spend more time analyzing those who do. Concentrate on the process of moving clients through each level of your funnel effectively.
Simultaneously, keep newcomers entering the funnel at all times.
Paula Morand is a leadership building, revenue boosting, strategy expanding keynote speaker, author and visionary. This dreaming big and being bold leadership expert and brand strategist brings her vibrant energy, humor and wisdom to ignite individuals, organizations and communities to lead change, growth and impact in a more bold fashion. 24 years, 27,000 clients, 34 countries, 15 books, former radio personality, 11x award winning entrepreneur and humorous emcee.Check out Paula’s best selling books: “Bold Courage: How Owning Your Awesome Changes Everything”, “Dreaming BIG and Being BOLD: Inspiring stories from Trailblazers, Visionaries and Change Makers” book series; and due to be released soon “Bold Vision: A Leader’s Playbook for Managing Growth” go to Amazon http://ow.ly/i8yW307ix67
Speaking inquiries email bookings@paulamorand.com or call toll-free 1-888-502-6317.