Why You Need a Sales Funnel

So you spent the last year creating your book/course/SAAS/app/web-app/game, released it to the world and… crickets.

You, my friend, are not alone. I’ve been there, many people I know have been there, it doesn’t feel great does it?

However don’t despair, your work has only just begun. You may have spent a year (or more) creating your product, now you need to enter the shadowy world of sales…

What you need now is a sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel?

Simply put, a sales funnel is a process that turns prospects into paying customers. It’s called a funnel because if you draw the process with the prospects at the top, those prospects funnel down to the bottom, where your product sits waiting for a sale.

Not everyone who sees an ad, buys the advertised product and not everyone who enters your sales funnel will reach the bottom and purchase your product. For instance if 100 people enter your sales funnel and 10 people purchase your product then you have a conversion rate of 10%. By the way, that’s considered a very good conversion rate!

The stages of a sales funnel

Funnel Top — Awareness / Attention

This is all about driving traffic into the top of your funnel. There are many ways you can do this including: YouTube, social media posts, SEO, ads. At this point you shouldn’t be selling anything. You should be setting yourself up as an expert in the area where your product resides.

The prospect at this stage visits your landing page for the first time and moves to the middle of the funnel.

Funnel Middle — Lead Magnet

This is where you give something away for free and engage your prospect for the first time. What you give away must be engaging and useful. It could be a mini-course, a webinar or an email series that contains useful content. At this stage you will want to try and capture their email address in return for the free offer.

Once you have the prospect’s email address, you can move on to the bottom of the funnel.

Funnel Bottom — Nurture

Now you have the prospects email, it may be tempting to try and immediately sell to them. However usually you will want to build trust through a series of emails.

This stage can look quite different depending on what you are selling. High priced items will usually take more nurturing. There are various techniques that can be employed like first selling a lower priced item that creates a customer who is then more likely to buy a higher priced item.

What needs to be understood is that at this stage of the funnel a prospect can remain here for quite some time before making a purchase. Hence it is important to engage with them on an ongoing basis, building that trust so that hopefully, one day they will take the plunge and go ahead with a purchase. The good news being that once a prospect becomes a customer they are far more likely to spend more with you in the future.

Summary

So hopefully you now know the basics of what a sales funnel is. Also, hopefully, you know why you should have one in place to avoid those pesky crickets and get the sales you deserve.

Of course the devil is in the details.

Copy is important, your landing page must be well laid out and convincing. Those emails should be automated and well thought out. There are upselling opportunities, SEO considerations, tracking of what and who you have sold to… quite a lot of work in fact.

Creating your product was the easy part ;-) .