What Is Sales Funnel?

Today, the shopping process between sellers and purchasing customers consists of several layers. In other words, we can describe the sale as a more comprehensive and knowledge-based study. In this article, we will talk about the concepts of the sales funnel and wheel model, which I think every professional salesperson should know.

Let’s start with the sales funnel first. A sales funnel is a sales and marketing tool used to show the customer journey incrementally. In other words, we can also call it the process covering the date we first contacted a user and the date we invoice him.

How To Create Sales Funnel?

• Setting our target
• Creating a preliminary offer for our potential client
• Qualifying our leads to confirm interest in our product or service
• Nurturing our qualified potential customers
• Negotiation and closing of sale
• Following the final results and analyzing the sales data.

Why Should We Use Sales Funnel?

Accurate customer acquisition and profitability are crucial for companies. And, of course, it is vital to implement the precise technique and process. Companies that do not follow a planned and information-based strategy in the customer acquisition process cannot achieve the desired efficiency and success in which the importance of the sales funnel concept comes into play.

Using the sales funnel technique, we can continue our sales operation more functionally to take the right steps and use the resources effectively. Let’s take a look at how the sales funnel works with examples;

At the beginning of our article, we described the sales funnel as a process from when our potential customers start to need any of our products or services, until the moment we sell these products and services.

 

At the top of the image above are potential customers who need our product or service. This region is generally characterized as the stage where we establish the first contact with the user by suggesting that we can meet their needs. The next step is the stage where we will show that we can meet the needs of the user in a real sense and attract their attention and attention. Effective exchange of information with the user will facilitate this process in a positive way.

As users move towards the decision stage in the sales process, of course, there will be a decrease in the number of users we communicate with at the beginning of the funnel, which is a very normal situation. Users have become more experienced and selective buyers while getting more detailed information about products and services with the developing technology.

Considering the intense competition environment, it is quite natural that we sometimes encounter the situation of interrupting the communication of the customer directly during the decision stages. Finally, the bottom part includes the community, which is perhaps dwindling in number, but which we can describe as the right customer for us.

Finally, let’s explain the sales funnel process with an example scenario;

Let’s say that there are 100 different potential customers whom we have determined that we can meet their needs with our product or service in a month.
After the first contact, we were able to organize an online meeting with 60 of 100 customers. After the meeting, 45 of these 60 customers request product demos from us. We see that the number of potential customers requesting a budget offer after the demo has decreased to 25.

After approximately two weeks of budget proposal follow-up, we reach the closing stage with 5 customers who find our service quality and interesting and receive a positive response to the offer. As the process progresses, we see that the number of potential customers we have gradually decreased, but we reach a more accurate customer profile for us. The process continues to meet the after-sales satisfaction of our customers by constantly analyzing sales data.

As it is seen, every company and sales personnel should emphasize the concept of sales funnel in order to spend the resources of the institution in the most effective and correct way and to reach the right customer.

References;

https://blog.hubspot.com/