Make Your Customer, also, Your Partner !.

FUNNEL and Effective Sales Strategy: If you Build it, they will come.

Every company has a sales funnel, structured or not. The important thing is to have it perfectly defined to get valuable information about the sales process of the company, but how do you know if your sales funnel is optimized?

What is the sales funnel for?

The purchase process of a user consists of different steps or phases in which the purchase intention is focused. The sales funnel or sales funnel is responsible for identifying these phases and determining the strategies that are carried out in each of them, from the moment the customer comes into contact with the business until it makes an effective purchase.

Although the final goal of the sales funnel is to close a transaction, each of the phases that make it up has relevance, so each time you complete one can be called microconversion. The moment one is achieved, the chances of reaching a final conversion are greater.

The really important thing about this sales funnel or conversion funnel is that it allows you to identify what is failing at each moment. If in one phase, we observe that the abandonment of the transaction has data greater than desired, it is clearly indicating that improvements must be introduced to minimize the abandonment at that stage.

Stages of the sales process

The challenge of a sales funnel is that most of the people who have contacted you interested in your products or services reach the end of the funnel, making a purchase. Hence the importance of accompanying the customer at each stage.

Attraction: the client gets in touch with the company, either by having been attracted with some kind of advertising or spontaneously. This is the moment in which the relationship between the two parties is known and initiated.

Prospectus: all contacts or leads that have entered the conversion funnel in the previous phase are identified in order to be aware of which are those in which it is really worthwhile to apply commercial strategies.

Opportunity: of the prospects identified as interesting, some of them will show interest in your products or services: the sales opportunity has arisen.

Qualification: at this stage of the funnel the customer is already qualified according to his interests, so we know which product or service is the one he is willing to acquire.

Closing: the customer initiates the purchase process, which leads to the closing of the sale.

Efficient planning of the sales funnel

After knowing the stages of the sales funnel, we'll look at the most common aspects where it fails so you can find answers and optimize your own funnel.

One of the biggest flaws is not accompanying customers, who go alone through the sales funnel. The customer must feel accompanied at every moment through his journey through the funnel. It is very effective to treat them by name, as long as you can have those data, to provide a more personalized attention that, clearly, you will appreciate.

Many companies do not encourage customer loyalty by not paying attention to customers who have already closed their purchase. According to Pareto's Law, 20% of customers account for 80% of a business' revenue, so we see that it is more profitable to keep a customer than not to concentrate our efforts on capturing a new one. The best thing that can happen is that we are in front of a recurring customer. In this way, they will recommend us to third parties and end up consuming our products or services more frequently. It is very effective to carry out an e-mail marketing campaign in which electronic bulletins are sent with the latest product news related to your purchase or discounts and promotions. With this, you will be able to keep your position in your mind.

The measurement of the data offered by the sales funnel is essential for optimization. This analysis controls the effectiveness of each phase and helps to identify those weak points in the funnel in which there are abandonments or withdrawals from the purchase process.

Analysis of the effectiveness of tactics. The figure that will show us the effectiveness is the Conversion Rate. Based on this data, we can see which techniques applied are not bearing fruit and introduce corrective measures to redirect the situation.

Carrying out of Test A/B. When the weakest phases are identified, different actions can be tested by introducing variants to see what works best. It is a matter of testing and collecting the results of the tests and then definitively implementing the one that works best.

Check the accessibility of the business. Actions should be simple and should not inconvenience the customer. If your website is not clear or the forms are too long, probably the client will not make conversions because of the complications it entails.

Never let your customer alone!. Become their Partner.

• Create Bond, Create Rapport, Create Trust , LISTEN your customer needs, but most important of all , engage and commit truly on their business: BUILD A RELATIONSHIP !

• Build the bridge of communication, close the gap of trust.

• Make your company become part of your customer´s business plan as Their Partner!, and they will always come back for your products and services.

As in the movie "Field of Dreams", a voice used to whisper Ray, ( Kevin Costner personage) saying: "If you build it , they will come..."

That´s also applicable here....

if you build relationship with your customers,

they will alwas come back. That´s for sure!