What are the sales funnel stages?

From the moment prospects hear about your product or service until the moment they make a purchase (or don’t), they pass through different stages of your sales funnel. That journey through your funnel may change from one prospect to another, but in the end, they’ll evaluate it based on their interest level. They’ll think about the problem they’re trying to solve and conduct competitive research to make sure your offering is the best solution.

In general, there are four main stages:

Stage 1: Awareness

The first of the sales funnel stages is called the “awareness” level because it's where people first become aware of your product or service. They may hear about you from your advertising, social media, even word of mouth.

How and why those people move down the sales funnel depends on your own sales and marketing ability, of course. The leads in the middle and lower sales funnel stages are those that you want to pay the most attention to because they've moved beyond?awareness?to interest.

An example of the awareness stage would be a prospect learning about your company for the first time. Perhaps they clicked on one of your ads, read your blog, found your website via a Google search, or heard a colleague talking about your product or service.

Stage 2: Interest

Once prospects have learned about your brand, they’ll evaluate it based on their interest level. They’ll think about the problem they’re trying to solve and conduct competitive research to make sure your offering is the best solution.

Stage 3: Decision

Armed with information about your company, prospects will dig deeper into your pricing and packaging options. Sales pages, webinars, and calls are helpful in this stage to help sway prospects to make a purchase.

Stage 4: Action

All your work comes down to this stage: whether the prospect makes a purchase or not. If they didn’t, the deal isn’t lost forever. You can create?nurture campaigns?to make sure you stay top of mind.

How to create a sales funnel for your business

For your sales funnel to exist, you first need prospects who can move through that funnel. Once you have those prospects, you can track behavior and engagement using?lead scoring?to identify where they are in the funnel.

Here are five steps to help you create a sales funnel:

1. Build a landing page

A?landing page?will most likely be the first time prospects learn about your company. If they click on an ad, sign up for a webinar, or download an ebook, they’ll go to a landing page. That page should clearly communicate who you are as a company and your unique benefits (after all, this could be the one and only opportunity you have to wow prospects). And, most importantly, make sure the landing page has a form for prospects to enter their information — you want to capture their email address so you can continue to communicate with them.

2. Offer something of value

Here’s the part where you have to give something to your prospects in exchange for their email address. A?lead magnet, like an ebook or whitepaper, is an effective way to offer something of value on your landing page.

3. Start nurturing

At this point, your prospects will move from the Awareness stage into the Interest stage. And, because you have all their email addresses from the landing page, you can create an?email nurture series?to share educational content about your offering.

4.?Upsell

As prospects move into the Decision stage, you want to offer anything that can nudge them into the direction of a purchasing decision. This could include a product demo, extended free trial, or special discount.

5. Keep it going?

In the Action phase, you’ll either land new customers or hear why prospects aren’t interested in purchasing. Either way, keep the communication going. For new customers, focus on product education, engagement, and retention. For prospects who didn’t make a purchase, build a new nurture series to check in with them every few months.