The Beginner’s Guide to Sales Funnel Stages

How do you turn a prospect into leads?

The goal of every marketing and sales person is to make a prospect take action. That action could be: signing up for a platform, becoming a member of a networking platform, or making a purchase.

This is known as a conversion. The process that turns prospects into leads and finally into paying clients.

To guide visitors throughout this process, you’ll need a sales funnel, which is essential to any business to business (B2B) marketing campaign.

An effective sales funnel is essential in converting prospects into clients. It will give valuable intuitions into a prospect’s thought process, pain points, and buying decisions.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a visual representation of a sales process from inception to finish. It embodies the purchaser’s journey, the first contact with your business until they make a decision to purchase or not. It’s a marketing concept that maps out a client’s journey towards making a purchase.

The reason it’s called a funnel is because of its tapering shape and because it aids with filtering prospects and converting them into clients.

The funnel is a sequence of steps a visitor takes to become a client. Imagine a real-life funnel. The top of the funnel has a wide opening that narrows down towards the end. A lot of potential clients will enter the funnel, with each stage of the funnel pushing qualified prospects on to the next stage. It filters out those who do not qualify for your service or product.

You have to accept that not everyone who enters your sales funnel will become a client and purchase your service or product. Each prospect will go through each phase. That’s why the probability of a client making a purchase will also change. As they go further along the funnel, you’ll learn more information about the client. It’ll become clear whether your service or products are valuable to them.

Why Sales Funnels Are Important? 

As a marketing or sales person, a sales funnel allows you to visualize your sales process. Think of it as a client’s journey to conversion. With a visual representation, you can rapidly pinpoint the moment you lose prospects. In doing so, you can develop your sales process, see what’s wrong and test out changes.

Additional reasons to create a sales funnel?

• Attract the right leads: Stop blindly selling to anyone who comes along. A well-structured funnel will help you talk directly to your defined ideal client. You only need to attract clients who are most likely to purchase your service or product.
• Focus on the right leads: With a well-constructed funnel, you can gain insights into what leads to pursue. Each stage of the sales funnel gives you an opportunity to learn more about a prospect.
• Sort, appraise, and rank leads: Not all leads are equivalent. Some are easily converted, and others need more persuasion. A sales funnel will help to evaluate whether a lead requires developing or when they are ready to buy.
• Forecast sales volume: The aim of every marketing strategy is to gain more clients. That said, a sales funnel gives you an understanding of how many prospects entered your funnel and how many are most likely to buy. You can use this to build a sales projection.

Best of all, a sales funnel doesn’t only provide client intelligence, it also helps you develop relationships. That’s why you need to understand how each stage of your sales funnel works. In doing so, you’ll make the most out of your marketing strategies.

The Sales Funnel Stages Explained

From the moment your clients learn about your business until they purchase your services or products, they pass through each stage of the sales funnel.

For the client, they’re merely choosing, evaluating, and shopping for a service or product. That said, use your target client’s perspective to create a sales funnel making sure that your sales process is easy and simple. When you achieve this, you’ll easily encourage them to keep moving through your sales funnel towards conversion.

To ensure this, let’s take a closer look at each stage of the sales funnel.

Awareness

Imagine a potential client who’s looking to solve a specific problem, for example, they want more clients. So, they search for “the best way to generate leads.”

During this early stage, your target audience wants to look at options. This is when they become aware of your service or product. They found your website, met you networking, found you through a blog post, a tweet, or a social media post. Here are other ways to raise brand awareness:

• Live events including shows and networking
• Social media advertising
• Media mentions
• Blog content
• Webinars
• Viral campaigns

You always need to keep your business visible so it’s discoverable by potential clients.

Interest

When your prospect discovers your service or product, they will start investigating - your prospect is still looking for answers to solve a problem. Aggressively pushing your brand through tacky sales tactics will only turn the prospects off.

Consumers are constantly bombarded with adverts via many different mediums. That’s why consumers are turned off and are harder to engage. They are trying to get away through subscription services or by using ad blockers. As a marketing person, you don’t want to frighten away your prospect. You need to induce them to learn more about your brand.

How?

You will need to have content that’ll show how you can solve the problem they have. Establish your creditability through expertise by creating valuable and credible content.

Using our previous example, their questions will most likely be:

“How to make meaningful contacts that turn into leads?”

Provide the prospect with all the required information to make an informed buying decision.

Here are a few things you should offer your prospects:

• Service or product checklists
• In-depth user guide
• How-to or tutorials relevant to your business
• Relevant blog posts or social media posts

During the interest stage, you want your potential client to follow you on social media or subscribe to your mailing list. Prospects will be unsure whether your service or product is the correct one to answer their problems. That’s why you need to build a client relationship. You can do this through targeted posts, emails, newsletters, other relevant content, and more.

Decision

In this next stage, a prospect is now considered to be a qualified lead. Due to their interest and the information, you’ve collected on them, you have recognised them as qualified leads. This means they’re most likely going to buy your service or product. But they’re not ready to buy just yet.

Qualified leads will start comparing your service or product against your competitors, considering all their options. To help them make a decision, you should provide content such as:

• Client testimonials are worth more and something that people will look for to inspire trust
• Reviews and product recommendations are also very valuable and help the potential client to differentiate you as a business that they want to use
• Frequently asked question pages
• Pricing pages with feature comparison between you and your competitors
• Consultations
• Tutorial webinars

Your lead must feel confident in your offer. Most importantly, they must be firm in their belief that your service or product solves their problem. Make your proposal and add a call to action. Your proposal should be irresistible. For instance, you can offer a 14-day free trial, a free upgrade, or other special offers.

Action

Well done, you are at the bottom of the funnel!

In this stage, your lead has closed the deal or made a purchase, they are now a paying client, but your job doesn’t end here. You still need to nurture your relationship by continually engaging with them. For example, sending them a follow-up email including resources they might want or articles they will find useful.

Send them a survey, asking them about the service or product they have taken. Ask them how useful it was to them. Did they have any additional queries, was there anything that you could have done better? Most importantly, your team should be available to provide support.

Why do you have to go to such lengths?

Because you want to turn one purchase into two, three, and so on, offering post-sale support helps you to truly grow your relationship with the customer and will gain you referrals and build more testimonials. 

The goal is to retain clients and reach more prospects. It is always easier to keep a client than to gain a new one, which can be seen from the amount of work in the steps involved in a sales funnel.

Conclusion

Remember, your sales funnel will develop over time. As you learn more about your clients, your sales funnel will need modifications, which’s normal. One way to measure the success of your sales funnel is to keep track of your conversion rates. For instance, you can track how many signed up to your email list.

When creating a sales funnel, you need to know your target client. Understand their pain points and anticipate any questions they might have.

Most importantly, think from their point of view. How are they going through the buying process?

From there, you can start to build your sales funnel from start to finish. Here’s a quick recap:

1. You need to provide in-depth information for your prospect in the awareness, interest, and decision stages of the funnel.
2. A clearly laid out sales funnel will help move your prospect through the different stages.
3. Create a structured and well-planned approach to find loopholes in your sales process.

Most importantly, don’t stop at the point of conversion. Continually build a lasting relationship with your clients. In doing so, they’ll keep choosing your products and services. Best of all, they’ll feel encouraged to talk about your brand and recommend you to others as well.