The funnel process, also known as a marketing funnel or revenue funnel, is a concept that illustrates how a sale begins with a large number of potential customers and ends with a much smaller number of people actually making a purchase. It is the journey potential customers take when they go to buy, and it consists of several steps, commonly known as the top, center, and bottom of the funnel. At each stage of the funnel, buyers are brought one step closer to making a purchase. A well-planned sales funnel will define the actions your company must take to take potential customers to the next stage.
Customers enter the sales funnel and, through a process of discernment, choose to move to an alternative solution or buy from you. The action at the end of the funnel, or the purchase, completes the stages of the conversion funnel. A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the steps a visitor takes from meeting your brand for the first time until they make a conversion. It is a roadmap designed by a company to guide potential customers from their first interaction with the brand to becoming paying customers.
The first stage of the sales funnel is called the “knowledge level”, because it is where people first become aware of your product or service. Many small business sales funnels look more like sieves, with gaps that leave behind patched spreadsheets, sticky notes, missed appointments and forgotten follow-ups. To get potential customers into your sales funnel, you can offer them something in exchange for their email address. This could be a free trial of your product, an invitation to a webinar, downloadable content, or anything else that you think can convince them to hand in their email address so sellers can contact them later in the funnel.
But let's say the customer is evaluating marketing automation programs to help improve the sales funnel they created. Prospecting and marketing are all the things you do to get people to the first of your sales funnel stages. This is sometimes called a “leaky funnel” because it allows customers you want to keep to escape from the funnel. A sales funnel helps you understand what potential customers are thinking and doing at every stage of the buying process.
If your company doesn't have a defined sales funnel or if you're just starting out, you'll need to create one from scratch. Making fewer mistakes can lead to more sales with the same number of potential customers and, first of all, to getting more new leads into your funnel. During the second stage of the sales funnel, the sales team must follow up with the potential customer to learn more about their needs and challenges. Whatever your own stages of the sales funnel, the support you'll need to manage them will be the same. Marketing funnels provide access to data, called marketing funnel reports, that allow you to see where you are losing customers.
