Starting a Consulting Business? How to Generate Leads and Turn Prospects into Customers

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're interested in starting your own consulting business. Congratulations! It's a great way to make money and help people solve their problems. But before taking clients, you need to generate leads and turn those leads into paying customers. In this article, we'll teach you the basics of what a sales funnel is and how you can use it to grow your business online.

What is a Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel is a process businesses use to generate leads and convert them into customers. The funnel begins with awareness, where potential customers are exposed to the business through marketing channels such as ads, social media, or search engines.

Next, interest is generated by providing more information about the product or service. This can be done through website content, blog posts, or email marketing. Once a prospect is interested in the product or service, they enter the consideration stage, where they compare different options and decide which is right for them.

Finally, prospects become customers when they purchase or sign up for a subscription. By understanding the marketing funnel, businesses can create targeted content and campaigns that attract and convert leads into customers.

The Value Ladder Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is a model businesses use to understand and visualize the customer journey from initial awareness to purchase. The sales funnel is often divided into four stages: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. The goal of the sales funnel is to move customers through each stage of the funnel and ultimately convert them into paying customers.?

The Value Ladder is a specific type of sales funnels often used in digital marketing. The Value Ladder is designed to take customers from initial awareness to high-value customers. The critical difference between the Value Ladder and other sales funnels is the focus on increasing levels of value to the customer at each stage of the journey.?

The Value Ladder starts with a free offer (such as an eBook or report) that helps to generate awareness and interest in the product or service. The free offer is followed by a low-cost offer (such as a video course) that helps to further interest and engage the customer.

As the customer progresses up the Value Ladder, they are offered increasingly valuable products and services (such as coaching or consulting) until they eventually become a high-value customer (such as a VIP client).?

The Value Ladder is an effective sales funnel because it takes customers on a journey of increasing value. By providing customers with valuable content at each stage of their journey, businesses can build trust and credibility, ultimately leading to more conversions and higher-value customers.

Importance of a Sales Funnel

Sales funnels are one of the essential tools in a marketer's arsenal. By providing a framework for identifying and categorizing prospects, they help businesses to focus their sales and marketing efforts and ultimately close more deals.

Funnels also make it possible to track progress and identify areas where improvements can be made. In short, sales funnels are essential for any business that wants to maximize its sales potential.?

While the benefits of sales funnels are clear, many businesses still struggle to put them into practice. The problem is that funnels can be complex, with many different moving parts. However, with some planning and forethought, any business can develop an effective sales funnel that will help drive sales and grow their business.

How to Build a Sales Funnel?

In its most basic form, a sales funnel is simply a process that leads potential customers from initial awareness of your product or service to eventually making a purchase. However, there is more to building an effective sales funnel than simply putting up a few ads and hoping for the best.

To maximize conversions and ensure that your target audience receives the right message at each stage of the buyer’s journey, it is crucial to put some thought into the design of your funnel.?

The first step in any effective sales funnel is to generate awareness of your brand and its offerings. This can be done through various means, such as paid advertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or content marketing.

Once you have captured the attention of your target audience, it is important to nurture those leads by providing them with valuable information that will help them make a purchasing decision. This might come from an ebook, video series, or email course.?

Finally, once you have built up trust and credibility with your leads, it is time to make an offer. This could be a free trial of your product or service or a discount on the purchase price. By providing value at every funnel stage, you will be more likely to convert leads into customers.

4 Stages of the Sales Funnel

The four stages of the sales funnel are Awareness, Interests, Decision, and Action. By understanding these stages, businesses can market their products and services more effectively to potential customers.

Awareness

The Awareness stage is the first step in the sales funnel. In this stage, potential customers are not yet aware of a problem that needs to be solved. To reach this stage, businesses must use marketing techniques that generate awareness of the business and its products or services. Once potential customers know the business, they can consider its products or services as a solution to their problems.

Interest

The Interest stage is when the customer becomes aware of a problem and begins to search for solutions. To reach this stage, businesses must use marketing techniques that generate interest and awareness among potential customers. Once the customer is aware of their problem, they will begin to consider different solutions and evaluate which one is the best fit for their needs.

Decisions

The Decisions stage of a sales funnel is when prospects are ready to make a purchasing decision. At this stage, they have already been persuaded that they need your product or service and are now trying to decide which specific option to choose. To help them make their decision, you need to provide relevant information about your product, such as features, benefits, pricing, etc. Once they have all the necessary information, they can compare your product to the competition and decide which option is best for them. If you have done an excellent job of marketing your product in the earlier stages of the funnel, then you should have no problem closing the sale in the Decisions stage.

Action

The Action stage is the point at which a customer makes a purchase. To reach this stage, businesses must first generate interest and persuade customers that their product or service is the best solution to their problem. Once the customer is ready to buy, businesses need to make it easy to take action by providing clear instructions and a smooth purchase process.

Ready to Learn More About Building Funnels to Grow Your Business?

If you’re ready to learn more about how to build sales funnels and generate leads for your business, then check out some of the resources below. These are the SAME TOOLS that I've used to learn the core principles around marketing and lead conversion:

• 5 Day Lead Challenge
• DotCom Secrets Book
• Experts Secrets Book
• Traffic Secrets Book
• Build Your First Funnel
• Funnel Hacking Secrets Webinar
• One Funnel Away Challenge
• How to Run A Perfect Webinar That Converts