- Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel That Fills
- Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel Introduction
- Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel Event
Do you know your sales funnel metrics? This is important for you and your business if you want to achieve business growth.
- Learn all about what sales funnels are and why your business needs them! Click To Tweet Who needs a sales funnel. Seriously, everyone. But in all seriousness, everyone who is selling a product or a service needs a proper sales funnel strategy.
- Jul 30, 2020 The sales funnel is the visual representation of how you generate leads and nurture prospects through the sales process. Literally picture a funnel. The widest part at the top is your attempt to capture any leads possible no matter how broad. But as you move down and it narrows, you scale back your prospects that fit your ideal customer.
Dec 07, 2020 A sales funnel is a marketing concept that maps out the journey a customer goes through when making any kind of purchase. The model uses a funnel as an analogy because a large number of potential customers may begin at the top-end of the sales process, but only a fraction of these people actually end up making a purchase.
You know that sales funnel is one of the most important business elements that can increase your overall business potential energy. Previously, I have written two posts about sales funnel. The first is an explanation about the sales funnel. The second is about sales funnel improvements.
This post is a third post related to the most important sales funnel metrics with which you can easily implement improvements in your sales process. If you want to learn more about what to include, read about how Amazon use their sales process.
If you know the numbers you will know the metrics and elements that must be improved to increase the business potential energy of your sales process and overall business. Furthermore, these metrics are the basis to know the right amount of business potential energy you have stored in the selling process as one of the business elements with potential energy.
Let’s see what are the most important sales funnel metrics.
Sales Funnel Metrics #1: Entry Point or Amount of Entrance
This is the number of leads or potential customers that enter into your sales funnel in a certain period of time. Simply, these sales funnel metrics is expressed in terms of numbers. Furthermore, the entrance can be expressed in terms of forecast numbers if you make projections of your sales funnel.
Measure Where Your Sales Funnel Start?
If you want to find the real numbers, you must previously define the borders of your sales funnel. This means that you need to know when your sales funnel starts. These borders can be customer’s comings in your sales store, or leads that contact your sales department, or leads that is contacted from your sales department, or potential customers who visit your website, or subscribe to your newsletter, and so on.
But, this is a not a simple job because the start of the sales funnels can be defined from different business efforts previously mentioned. If you want to know the real numbers at entry points of your sales funnel, you must define all your business efforts that bring leads into the sales funnel. When you know this, you can start to measure over a period of time the real numbers.
For example, you want to find sales funnel metrics about entrances in one month period of time. Then you can make only simple math with collecting numbers from different efforts that bring potential customers inside your funnel. In the table below is given this simple math:
| Business Effort | Number of Entrance |
| Contacts made from a sales department | 1000 |
| Leads that were contacted by your sales department | 2000 |
| Newsletter subscribers | 1000 |
| Total Entrance | 4000 |
Sales Funnel Metrics #2: Conversion Rates
I want to differentiate two types of the conversion rates in your sales funnel:
- Overall conversion rate
- In-process conversion rates
Overall Conversion Rate
The overall conversion rate is the ratio of the potential customers that your sales funnel transform into the buyers at the end of the sales funnel and potential customers that become part of the funnel. This metric is expressed by percents of entrances.
For example, 50% overall conversion rate means that 50% of the people that become part of your sales funnel have bought something from your business. The overall conversion rate depends on the next type of conversion rates.
In-process Conversion Rates
Your sales funnel have different elements. These elements can be awareness, interest, desire, and buying. For example, when the sales team contact potential customer, only part of them will be aware of your products or services. That is the first in-process conversion rate.
After that, the small part of potential customers with awareness will have an interest in your products and services. That is the second in-process conversion rate.
Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel That Fills
Next, the small part of the leads with interest will have a desire to buy something and this is the third in-process conversion rate. And at the end, the part of potential customers with desire will buy something. In this sales funnel with such elements, we can have 4 different in-process conversion rates:
- The conversion rate that converts entrants into the leads that are aware of your business, products, and services (CA).
- The conversion rate that converts leads with awareness into the leads with interest (CI).
- The conversion rate that converts the leads with interest into leads with desire (CD).
- The conversion rate that converts the leads with desire into buyers (CB).
How to Calculate Overall Conversion Rate?
With these four in-process conversion rates, you can calculate your overall conversion rate (C). You can make the calculation with simple multiplying all in-process conversion rates:
In the table below is an example:
| Entrance | Become Aware | Have Interest | Have Desire | Buying |
| 4000 | 1000 | 500 | 350 | 280 |
| (CA) = 25% | (CI) = 50% | (CD) = 70% | (CB) = 80% |
So, the overall conversion rate will be:
If you know the real entrance number and in-process conversion rates you will find overall conversion rates of your sales funnel. Furthermore, you can play with numbers to find the ways for possible improvements to your overall sales process.
Second Way to Calculate Sales Funnel Overall Conversion Rate
There is another way to calculate the overall conversion rate that you can use when you know the number of buyers at the end of the funnel. For example, if you have 4000 entrances and at the end of the funnel 280 of them buy something from you, then the (C) will be:
The process of finding in-process conversion rates is more difficult than to capture customers at the end of the funnel to divide with the number of entrances. However, you can also use the (CB) to find the in-process conversion rates. My recommendation is to know the in-process conversion rates. It is important because they will show you the possible areas for improvement of the sales funnel.
Sales Funnel Metrics #3: Average Sale
Average sale is the value expressed in currency generated at the end of your sales funnel. This measure is average dollars spend from one customer.
This is an important metric in each sale funnel. With this metric, you can see the value of your sales funnel. On the other side, this value will give you ideas for improvement of your sales process.
For example, if you find that this number is too small you can do a market research. Next, you can find the target market that will spend more money at the end of the funnel.
You can calculate this metric when you divide overall income for the specific period of time with the number of customers your sales funnel has generated. For example, if you generate $28,000.00 from 280 buyers, then the average sale will be $100 from one buyer.
Sales Funnel Metrics #4: The Duration of the Sales Funnel Process
This is the last sales funnel metric important in your sales process. Duration of the sales process is the time that is spent by one potential customer to become a buyer. This is an important metric that measures the quality of your sales funnel. If this time is very long than the quality is at the lower level. You can find these metrics if you measure the time when the potential customer come into your sales funnel. Next, you need to subtract this time from the time when that customer makes a decision to buy something.
Here I also recommend finding the single duration of every element of the sales funnel. If you know what is the sales funnel duration time for potential customers to pass all in-process elements, you will find the elements you need to improve.
Do the words sales funnel and make your entire body cringe as if you just heard someone tell a kid that Santa isn’t real?
I get it, sales funnels aren’t exactly dinner conversation with your significant other but if you learn how to use them, they change your business forever.
As an entrepreneur, you’re tasked with knowing all aspects of your business at some level even if you aren’t an expert in each area. That means content creation, marketing, advertising, accounting and everything in between.
But one area that is vital for entrepreneurs to understand is sales funnels. One successful sales funnel can literally change your business. The problem is that most people overcomplicate the entire process, get frustrated, and miss out on tons of revenue.
But honestly, funnels aren’t as complicated as you might think.
Funnels have been used in some capacity for decades including billboards, infomercials or direct marketing via snail mail. Simply put, sales funnels, online or offline are how companies get people through the buying process.
If you want to scale your business and get more time back in your days, understanding sales funnels is necessary. In this video, I quickly break down why funnels don’t need to be scary and why they are so important to your business.
What is a Sales Funnel?
So … what exactly is a sales funnel?
As Ryan Deiss said in this Entrepreneur.com article, “The sales funnel as a multi-step, multi-modality process that moves prospective browsers into buyers. It’s multi-stepped because lots must occur between the time that a prospect is aware enough to enter your funnel, to the time when they take action and successfully complete a purchase.”
In simple terms, it gets people from browsing to buying. The fact is that most people won’t just naturally convert once they land on your website. You have to give them a reason to do anything. Whether it’s downloading a free e-book or having them buy a product. You have to guide them through the entire process.
To better understand sales funnels and learn how you can use them in your business, here is a commonly used 4-step process to give you more context.
The 4-Step Process of Sales Funnels
Whether you have a blog, podcast, paid ads or any other type of digital media content, the goal is to offer a solution to your potential buyer. A funnel does just that.
In this example, lets assume you have a digital course or online coaching program available. Here’s how to convert website visitors into paying customers using the AIDA model.
Step 1: Awareness
Once people land on your website or click on your ad, you first need to incentivize them to join your email list. This is usually done by presenting a free masterclass (webinar), e-book, checklist or 15-minute consult.
Depending on how you got users to your funnel will determine their likelihood to opt-in. For example, if users found you on Google through SEO, you probably have some authority as your content matched the user’s search intent. But a paid ad to cold traffic on Facebook might be harder to convert.
Step 2: Interest
Once you gained awareness, potential buyers now enter your funnel. Initially, they’re usually welcomed with an email sequence. This is how you can relate to them, share your story, and begin to offer a solution to their problem. The key is to make yourself the “Attractive Character” in this welcome sequence.
Co-founder of Click Funnels, Russell Brunson, said it best … “It’s about the persona you’re sharing with our audience and how you communicate with your list. Most people either don’t bother to create this character or they won’t do it correctly.”
This is vital to have your attractive character be relatable to your target audience.
Finding this useful so far? Do you want to build a sales funnel that makes you money on auto-pilot? Click the button below to grab yourself a FREE copy of my workbook about funnel building, instantly!
Step 3: Decision
At this point in your funnel people have clicked on some links, maybe attended a webinar or received a free course to warm them up. To get people further down in the funnel, it’s about building more trust and offering up testimonials or success stories. People love social proof when making buying decisions!
Step 4: Taking Action
The final step of your funnel is to get the prospective buyer into taking action. You can do this by offering up a limited-time offer, discount prices or bonuses. And the more expensive the offering, the more steps typically need to get them to convert.
Examples of Sales Funnels
Now that you understand how a sales funnel works, here are a few ideas to figure out how your business can get started.
Low to High-End Sales Funnel
A low to high-end funnel is a bit more complicated than a high to low funnel as you need to have more products or services.
Here’s an example of how a low to high-end funnel might work as a consumer:
- Land on a website, opt-in to receive a free ebook
- Offer a chance to buy a discounted $27 video course (known as a one-time offer)
- If I buy, I might get another upsell offer for a higher ticket course or 1:1 coaching
- If I don’t buy, I might get a downsell for something else like a monthly membership site
These funnels are a bit more work as you need more products or service and can get complicated to set up. Instead, keep it simple with a high-end funnel.
High-End Sales Funnel
An option I recommend trying is a high-end funnel for a webinar. Here’s how it would work using Facebook ads and an evergreen webinar:
- User clicks on a Facebook ad to attend an automated webinar in the form of a free masterclass or streaming workshop.
- They get an email reminding them of the webinar and attend a live or automated webinar.
- Once they attend, you would provide value on the topic for 45-60 minutes.
- After you’ve shared your story (using your “Attractive Character”) and solution, you then pitch your online courses or coaching. I usually recommend products from $200 – $3,000.
- Some will buy instantly, some will wait, and some won’t stick around the entire webinar.
How Sales Funnels Can Help You Sell High Ticket Programs
Webinars are one of the easiest ways to help you increase revenue and close higher ticket items. Instead of spending time trying to sell a $9.97 eBook, webinars can help you sell high ticket coaching, consulting, and online courses.
Here are some ways you can use social media to get people into your funnels, attend your webinar, and start growing your revenue.
Using Social Media and Automation to Grow Revenue on Autopilot
Each social media channel gives you different ways to boost credibility with your audience and easily include a link to a webinar signup page.
Here are the best ways to get people signed up:
Instagram is a great way to drive people to your webinar. Make sure that you add your webinar registration link in the bio, use with Instagram swipe-up ads, and stories (if you have 10K+ followers).
Facebook ads are one of the best ways to drive registrants into your funnel and webinar. Try out different tactics and audiences to find the lowers cost per acquisition. Also, if you have a big following you can use Facebook Lives as well.
Youtube
Another great place that I’ve seen convert really well is adding a link to your evergreen webinar in your Youtube video description. Remember, users go to Youtube for long-form content already so it’s a very natural path to get them to join a 60-minute webinar.
You can use a snippet of your webinar on Youtube or similarly high-value content teaching them a related topic to gain awareness and interest.
Here is an example of one of our High Ticket Sales Funnels that leverages paid ads, webinars and sales calls.
Final Thoughts on Sales Funnels
Hopefully, you now have a clearer understanding of sales funnels and how you can use them in your business. The biggest key to creating a sales funnel is to know your audience and what problem you can solve. Then you can reverse engineer a funnel to give them a solution in the form of a webinar that leads to courses or coaching.
Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel Introduction
Make sure you take advantage of Easy Webinars automated evergreen webinars to convert more people into your funnel, especially with high-ticket offers.
Why It's Important To Understand Your Sales Funnel Event
If you are ready to start building a sales funnel that makes you money on auto-pilot, click the button below to grab yourself a FREE copy of my workbook about funnel building, instantly!