Creating a healthy sales funnel (in other words, one that converts the maximum number of leads into sold, happy customers) requires a clear understanding of every part of your particular sales funnel. Why? Because once you have that, it becomes a whole lot easier to identify the areas that need input or attention.
The funnel below illustrates the entire lead-conversion process, from start to finish – or, should we say, top to bottom. Within that process, we have identified five key optimisation opportunities, each of which will help you to increase the overall health of your sales funnel, reducing lost leads and maximising the number of sold customers. Here goes:
STEP 1: OPTIMISING YOUR DATA
The better the quality of your leads, the fewer you’ll lose throughout the funnel’s filtering process. Leadify has many built-in features that are designed to help you ensure that the leads dropping into your funnel are already of high quality. The old top-of-funnel approach is like throwing mud at the wall and just seeing what sticks, while the new approach involves finding the pieces that are going to stick and targeting them. From continuous data cleansing to multivariate testing and batch learning, there are many ways to optimise your data. Let us know if you need help!
STEP 2: REVIEW YOUR LEAD EXCLUSIONS AND FILTERS
It doesn’t matter how good your leads are; if they’re getting lost in the middle of the funnel, then you are wasting your time and money. Examine your leads-management systems and software to ensure that you’re sending the right kind of leads into the sales-fulfilment phase. This step is all about auditing your processes to ensure that you aren’t losing quality leads or, conversely, allowing low-quality leads to slip through.
STEP 3: ENHANCE YOUR CONTACTABILITY PROCESSES
Remember: it is critically important for you to contact a lead within the golden window. The longer you wait, the lower your chances will be of converting that lead – and the more that lead will cool down and get lost, which brings us to…
STEP 4: OPTIMISING YOUR RETARGETING STRATEGY
Many of the leads that get lost during the sales-fulfilment phase can be recollected and redirected to the top of the funnel for re-engagement. Perhaps you could cross-sell another product to them, or perhaps some of the leads’ circumstances will change to make them more interested in your product at a later stage. It’s all about catching the leads that leak out and redirecting them back up to the top of the funnel for further proactive engagement.
STEP 5: PERFECT YOUR SALES CHANNELS
Whatever your sales channels may be, it’s worth taking the time to assess how effectively they are converting your leads into sales. If they aren’t working as well as they should, your existing channels might need some work, or you might want to try testing a different sales fulfilment channel to see if it yields better results.
The bottom line? As they say, knowledge is power – and we hope that this article has empowered you to create a healthy, high-functioning sales funnel that allows you to make the most out of every sales opportunity that comes your way.