The sales funnel is an effective manager tool

Improving sales performance is something that interests everyone who works in the trade, from the usual salesperson to the manager.

If everything is sold badly, then the earnings will be unimportant.

And unimportant earnings over a long period of time can lead to the closure of the company.

The situation can be rectified with the help of effective tools, for example, such as the sales funnel. This is something that will help you understand what stages the client is going through before making purchases, discovering the mistakes your managers make while making sales, predicting the size of future sales.

In general, an advanced person dealing with trade, without this funnel in any way.

What is a sales funnel and what is it for?

If you do not use terminology from the marketing field, you can explain what a sales funnel is quite simple: in fact, this is the number of buyers who pass each of the stages of the relationship with the manager.

The sales funnel perfectly illustrates all the cycles of the transaction: from the offer of the manager to the transaction.

Visually this tool resembles an inverted pyramid, because at each stage of the transaction a certain number of consumers will be eliminated.

At the final stage of the purchase of goods, there will be much fewer customers than at the primary stage, when the consumer gets acquainted with the goods or service.

Who and why invented this tool?

It may seem to many that the sales funnel is some new tool, so few have heard of it.

This is fundamentally wrong, because they started talking about it at the end of the XIX century.

It all started with the fact that Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898 came up with the term "consumer funnel", and also described the 4 stages that the buyer passes before making a purchase.

According to Elias Sent-Elmo Lewis, the stages of the "consumer funnel" are:

• acquaintance of the potential buyer with the goods and service;
• of the emergence of interest in a product or service;
• emerging desire to acquire what interested him;
• committing an action, that is - buying.

How to make a sales plan?

Elias St. Elmo Lewis believed that thanks to the "consumer funnel" you can better understand the specifics of the buyer, which means - to sell him more goods and services.

Over time, the term has been transformed and today we find the name "sales funnel" in the specialized literature, but the essence of it has not changed much, in spite of the fact that this tool has been described in more detail than the author of the term did.

You can, of course, working as a marketer or a manager, having a private business in the field of trade, do without these specialized data, but it is better to feel yourself armed, especially now, when you have to fight for every buyer because of the high level of competition and not too muchfavorable economic situation.

Functions of

People who have come into the sphere of trade and marketing, without special education, sometimes neglect the opportunity to use the scientific approach in their work, even when they have a chance to learn something new.

Like, why should I even know what a sales funnel is, I'm already selling goods and services well, earning money, and stuffing my head with nonsense is not for me.

But the sales funnel performs a number of useful functions:

1. Allows you to control the sales process.

   Any sale is a process that consists of several stages.

   And, if you know about them, if you learn to better understand your customer, then sales can significantly increase.

2. With its help it is easy to monitor the manager's performance.

   Being the leader and using the sales funnel in your work, you can easily analyze which of your managers works flawlessly, and in whose work there are serious shortcomings that need to be corrected.

   you can explain by the example of each of the managers, at which stage of the work with the client they made a mistake in order to improve the implementation indicators.

3. Sales funnel is a tool for analysis( conversion) of different stages of the transaction.

   With its help, you can control how many potential buyers have moved from the "dating" stage to the product, and the next stage, and how many have been eliminated.

   If the number of customers lost at the first stage exceeds the standard, you should improve the efficiency of working with the target audience.

Problems that allow to solve the sales funnel of

If you see that recently there are serious problems in the sale of goods and services, you should not wait until the situation improves on its own, and begin to act immediately.

Many marketers, managers, owners of trading platforms( including Internet resources) complain that a large number of people come to get acquainted with the goods and services every day, but so many are eliminated at different stages that the purchase is eventually made by units.

8 basic sales techniques

Sales funnel solves a number of problems, it helps:

1. Determine what a successful manager differs from unsuccessful.

   For sure in your company there is a person who excellently works with clients and demonstrates high indicators on incomes.

   With the help of a funnel, let him share his experience with less intelligent colleagues.

2. Increase the number of potential customers.

   If you see that at the first stage the number of those who get acquainted with the goods is menacingly small, you need to use various methods of drawing attention to your company or resource - actively promoting it, for example.

3. Identify at which stage the largest number of customers are eliminated.

   If, for example, you get acquainted with your product / service 100 people, and only one is interested in it, you need to think about how to fix the situation.

4. To ensure that the majority of customers have passed all stages of sales.

   It is at the stage of the transaction that most customers are eliminated.

   It often happens that, despite the genuine interest on the part of the client, many are thrown off the hook at the stage of purchase.

   Analyze the mistakes you make: maybe you're pushing too hard on the client or giving him too much time to think.

5. Increase profit.

   If you correct all the mistakes in working with clients, if you achieve that as many customers as possible have passed all the stages of the sale, then the profit of your company will increase at times.

The sales funnel is the six mandatory stages of the

. Although Elias Sant Elmo Lewis, who actually explained what a sales funnel is, described only four stages that the client passes before making a purchase, modern marketers and managers must focus onsix stages.

What to do: times have changed, competition has increased many times, the client has become more spoiled and for his money will have to compete.

6 stages, from which the sales funnel is formed:

1. Forming your proposal.

   Before you start working with the buyer, you must form your offer.

   This will allow you to interest a man or a woman by presenting your goods and services in the most favorable light.

2. Cold contact with the customer.

   At this stage, the client does not know yet about your interest in it.

   For example, you enter potential customers( those who might be interested in your offer) in the list for calling or sending letters.

3. Proposal Forming.

   You directly contact the customer and explain to him what your offer is.

   It is very important at this stage to maximally interest the client, therefore:

   • form your proposal briefly and clearly;
   • watch speech, intonations;
   • take care of the appearance( if there is a direct contact);
   • quietly answer all questions of the consumer;
   • do not hang too low to cause irritation.

   This is an extremely important point, errors on which can lead to incorrect formation of the funnel and loss of profit, because it is at this stage that the consumer has an interest in the goods and services that you offer.

   It is important to keep this interest.

4. Persuasion.

   Rarely, what person agrees to make a deal after the third point.

   Unless the buyer has a specific goal and came to her in the right place( for example, the buyer came to the bread shop for a loaf - he does not need to be persuaded to buy a loaf because he came to you for this purpose).

   To maximize the number of individuals to the next stage, you need to convince them gently and unobtrusively, without using aggressive strategies, threats and pressure.

5. Transaction.

   If you did everything correctly in the previous four stages, then the consumer will purchase the proposed goods and services.

   This is what your goal was: close the deal, make a profit.

6. Analysis of results.

   In principle, you can stop at the fifth point, because the end result, to which you aspire, have been achieved.

   But this should be done only if the majority of interested parties to whom you formed your offer bought products or services.

   If the indicators are not as good as you would like, you need to analyze all the feet of the sales funnel in order to understand which stage you were wrong on and how you need to act next time so that more consumers make a deal.

Well, and of course, in order to form the right sales funnel, we need to start working with a sufficient number of potential consumers on the second step.

That is, you must use various tools to advertise and promote your products and services to enter into a cold contact with a large number of people who will reach the fifth stage and make a deal.

The funnel of sales and its effective use is also told in the video:

The sales funnel is an example that will help you better understand what it is

. You see that it's quite easy to understand the theoretical base of the sales funnel.

It's also easy to apply all the components of this tool in practice, which will result in increased sales and profits.

Let's figure out what the sales funnel is at the example of an online store selling souvenirs.

Imagine that there are 10,000 people in your store's subscribers.

Sales recently fell, and you decided to increase them at the expense of subscribers.

Write to each of 10,000 thousand letters with your proposal and wait for an answer.

For example, in the second stage, 1,000 people answered your offer( imagine that they wanted to clarify something, agree on a discount, etc.).

These 1,000 people are interested in your offer, but are not yet ready to purchase.

Calculate the conversion of this stage of the sales funnel: 1,000: 10,000 x 100% = 10%.

Hence, the conversion of the second period is 10%.

After a thousand interested parties clarified something for themselves, there were 100 people who promised to think, the others refused to consider your proposal.

The conversion of the third item is 1%( 100: 10,000 x 100%).

But up to the fourth step( before the purchase), only 10 people came.

Conversion - only 0.1%( 10: 10,000 x 100%).

Of course, these are small conversion rates in the fourth stage.

To change such an unpleasant situation for yourself, you have to understand that you are doing wrong, why in the second and third stages so many potential buyers are eliminated.

If you find slips in working with consumers, then increase sales, and accordingly - and profit.

If you listen to these tips, then on personal experience you will be able to make sure that sales funnel is an effective tool of managers and marketers, which leads to good work and high earnings.