How to Increase Productivity with Sales Funnel

The idea of a sales funnel is simple. At the initial stage of sales, you have a large number of potential customers. They are leads. Your leads and you travel together through the sales process. At the same time, some of the leads lose interest in your journey and leave it. That behavior of leads is symbolized by the narrowing edges of the sales funnel. At last a small number of leads touch the finish ribbon. They are making purchases, becoming customers. The real customers.

Each company divides the sales process into intuitive 😊😊😊 stages. Each stage symbolizes the achievement of the certain result. If there is no result the actions of the stage will be repeated. Upon achievement of the result, interaction with a client passes to the next stage of the sales funnel. The next result the next stage. And so on, till the very sale.

The stages of the sales funnel can be:

1. Phone Call
2. Meeting
3. Offer
4. Contract
5. Deal

Or they can be:

1. Find the decision maker
2. Identify needs
3. Make an offer
4. Evidence an offer
5. Sign a contract / Get a payment
6. Close a deal

When forming a sales funnel, you can either group the tasks of the sales process into stages or make each task a stage. The second option is more labor-intensive, so start with grouping the tasks. Take care of your customers and sales!

Of all the metrics of the sales funnel, the stage conversion is important for you. It is the minimum you need to measure.

Stage conversion rate  = Number of leads of the current stage / Number of leads who have switched to the next stage * 100%

For clarity, I will give an example. Let’s say you make 100 calls. Only 50 of them end with the appointment of the meeting. Conversion of calls to meetings = 100 / 50 * 100% = 50%.

Further, you hold meetings and only 30 of them end with a commercial offer. Conversion of this stage = 50 / 30 * 100% = 60%. And so on.

Now that you know the conversion rate of each stage, you can calculate how many offers, meetings and calls you have to make for One single sale.

The next indicator, which makes sense to fix in the CRM system or in the notebook – the reason which the client left. During the week-month-quarter you can collect statistics of customers’ refusals from the deals and make a list of refusals. Since under the high price there may be interesting details, that list of refusals is always supplemented with comments. Always!

What gives you knowledge of the stages conversion and their causes? The universe! 😊🙃 If you have few closed deals, it means either you need to increase the flow of leads or improve the quality of work at a certain stage.

Take on the study of one of the stages. For example, calls. Analyze the reasons for refusals to meet. What do you need to work out so that the number of meetings increases? When you work out this stage, move to the next.

You’ve done a great job – turning a potential customer into a real one. I have 2 news for you: good and brilliant. I’ll start with the good news.

The good news is that the sales funnel does not end on signing a contract or receiving a payment. Cool, yeah?! 😊😊😊 There are additional stages of your sales funnel. Yes! 😊😊😊 Now the brilliant news.

The brilliant news – you go through these additional stages with a REAL customer! So, the probability of sales increases.

So, these additional stages can be:

• Recommendation – Ask a client whom he can recommend for your sales.
• Feedback – Ask a customer to write a feedback about working with your company.
• Resale – Ask the same customer to buy again.
• After-sales service – If a customer refused after-sales service at the main sale, no problem, offer that service again.
• Loyalty program – Tell a client about the benefits of cooperation with your company.

Now to increase the productivity of your sales, you do not need to guess what to focus your attention on. Thanks to the sales funnel you have numbers. In addition, you have refusals of leads from deals. Such refusals are areas of your professional development and growth. 😎🤘