What does sales funnel management mean?
Sales funnel management describes the process of optimizing the customer journey from first contact to purchase. Typical sales funnel management activities include segmenting leads, analyzing customer behavior, creating personalized experiences for prospects, and measuring ROI from sales execution.
Setting priorities for the different contacts that happen at the same time in the sales funnel is another essential part of sales funnel management.
People usually think of a sales funnel as a cone narrowing at the top as you move down it.
It’s not at all a straight line. In most sales organizations, customers don’t go through the sales process as quickly as the typical picture makes it look.
That’s why having a good sales funnel management plan is so important: it helps businesses make each customer’s experience unique and meet their specific needs.
Like words
- Taking care of the customer journey
- Managing the purchase flow
- Managing the sales pipeline
Stages of a Sales Funnel
It has three parts: the top, the middle, and the bottom. At each stage of the sales process, you must use different ways to connect with the customer and set different goals.
ToFu: Awareness Stage at the Top of the Funnel
The first part of the funnel is all about getting leads, which means getting customers’ attention, getting them interested in the product, and building a connection with them.
Selling directly is less critical at the beginning of the sales funnel than getting people to know about the business, teaching them about it, and making connections.
Some everyday acts at the top of the sales funnel are:
- Marketing with content
- Campaigns on social media
- Forms for getting leads
- Sending emails
- Online meetings (webinars)
- Looking for sales
- Qualifications that lead
- Making unwanted calls and emails
Sales at the top of the funnel are like planting a seed. Most business-to-business buyers are halfway through the decision-making process before they can talk to a salesperson. This means marketers and salespeople should focus on making their brand stand out at the top of the funnel.
Qualified Lead in the Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)
People in the middle of the sales cycle know a little about a business’s product or service but need more details to decide.
Activities in the middle of the sales process include:
- Demos of products
- Case studies are
- What People Say
- Quotes on prices
Trials are free
People in the middle of the sales funnel are a special kind of customer for sales teams because they are already interested in the company’s product (or at least the type of product they give).
Reps can focus on asking questions and getting to know the prospect since they have already drawn the customer in through incoming and outgoing calls.
Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu): Choose and Finish
Customers are almost ready to buy a product and want to know what it’s like to work with the business.
Activities at the bottom of the tube are:
- Negotiating a contract
- How to close a deal
- Discounts on prices
- Cross-sells and up-sells
- Getting new customers
Time is running out at the bottom of the same tube. Most business-to-business sales take between 6 and 12 months, so it’s essential to stay in touch and always make sales.
How to Make a Sales Channel
Making a clear and measurable funnel is the first step in making a good sales plan. Then, sales managers can ensure that everyone is working together, find customer trends, and keep track of progress.
These steps will help you make a good funnel:
Gather Leads
Every business gets leads differently depending on their field, goals, and ideal customer profile (ICP).
These are the best ways to get new leads:
- Making unwanted calls and emails
- Selling on Facebook
- Marketing with content
- Forms to sign up and opt-in
- SEO stands for “search engine optimization.”
- Search ads that cost money
Programs that help people find jobs
Getting in front of as many perfect customers as possible is the primary goal of lead capture. These are some of the things that most businesses do to get new customers.
If you want to reach the first step, the goal is not to close a deal. Instead, the conversion rate is based on a minor action, like setting up a meeting, asking for information, or making an appointment.
Get Leads Ready
Customer leads that become new customers are less likely to leave because they buy the product (or set of goods) they need.
The trouble is that a lot of the leads that come in from both incoming and outgoing calls are either
- Not yet ready to buy
- Not a good match for the business’s collection of goods
- Not able to buy because of limits
- Not making decisions
Not having enough money
This makes sense, especially for campaigns meant to catch many people for testing reasons. Poor lead screening, on the other hand, leads to lost customers and low sales efficiency. This makes the second step in building a sales funnel a critical turning point.
A genuinely qualified lead is made up of three steps, and each one is significant.
Lead: A potential customer who is first interested in a business’s products will enter their information, download some papers, and interact with different parts of the business website. This doesn’t mean they’ll be a good fit for the product, but it shows interest.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): An interested party who has read and viewed some of the business’s content may become an MQL. This type of lead has gotten several pieces of information and revisited the website. Most businesses use B2B marketing automation to keep track of their MQLs, so nurturing them doesn’t cost too much.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): An SQL is a prospect who has downloaded several pieces of material, such as pricing pages and buying guides, and has shown a clear interest in buying. This makes management much more expensive because a sales worker must oversee them personally. If an organization’s sales plan includes cold calling, sales reps will also find their SQLs.
Salespeople can’t focus on leads too early in the marketing cycle to make the most sales and keep the conversion rate high. A lead must go through several pre-qualification rounds before reaching SQL rank.
Get qualified prospects to move through the funnel.
That’s fine; the pool of qualified leads for sales will be smaller (sometimes by a lot) than the original funnel. Since sales workers only have so much time, it’s best to focus on leads most likely to turn into customers.
When a salesperson and a SQL first meet, it’s like a screening process.
Outbound starts with a call or email meant to spark a chat. If the prospect hasn’t already, a sales rep will usually write or set up a meeting with an inbound lead.
In this step, you’ll check the lead’s information (so there are no surprises when you close) and determine if they need the company’s product.
During the first calls with SQLs, the following are common parts:
- Talking about the wants and problems of customers
- Asking them questions to learn more about their present issues
- Evaluating them based on their spending, delivery time, and product needs
- Noting other people who make decisions, have power, or act as gatekeepers
The goal is not to close the deal but to keep the sales cycle going. After the first meeting, SQLs still interested in a company’s goods are now seen as “opportunities.”
Move chances up and down the funnel.
Potential customers who are ready to buy are called sales chances. To turn these prospects into buyers, the next step is to:
Giving individualized advice and support
Looking at different ways people might buy will help them find the best answer for their needs
Getting to know the people who make decisions to make sure the buying process goes smoothly
Getting customers who don’t want to switch or accept a new product to do so
Helping the customer make a choice is all that this stage is about. It’s better to take your time and help them than rush them through the process without ensuring they understand what they’re doing.
The goal is, of course, to make a sale. But a perfect lead could back out for many reasons, even after the choice.
A deal’s chance is affected by price competition, changes in how a company works, and a sales cycle that lasts too long.
Bring back lost leads.
If a sales lead didn’t become a buyer the first time, that doesn’t mean they won’t again. A lead should be added to automated marketing efforts as long as they have gone through the sales funnel, even if they didn’t buy anything.
A lot of the ongoing lead interaction is based on the same ideas:
Giving worth, not selling too much
Taking care of ties over time
Giving individualized information and suggestions
Not only can leads that were about to convert turn out to be wrong but leads that were lost often turn out to be buyers later on.
Always check how well the funnel is working.
The management of the sales cycle comes right after the first step. For long-term success, businesses need to monitor how their channels are doing.
Evaluations must be done regularly to make sure that:
Leads are going through each stage on time and well.
This is how sales reps should talk to prospects:
The proper methods and tools are in place to make sales more accessible.
The team is doing things that can be used to get better leads, close more deals, and reach their business goals.
While each rep is responsible for evaluating and improving funnel performance, it is the job of management and top leadership to make decisions that are best for the team.
Problems with Running the Sales Funnel
Even if sales managers and their teams have a good plan for managing the sales funnel, they still have to deal with many unique problems regarding getting leads and turning them into customers.
Finding the Best Balance Between Reaching Out and Customization
There are two things that a sales company needs to do to make money:
- I am contacting enough potential buyers so that some of them will buy.
- Being specific enough in your method so that prospects will buy
It doesn’t make sense to fill up a sales pipeline with bad leads to get more leads, but neither does spending too much time on prospects who might not bring anything to the business.
In the middle is where the sweet spot is. Sales reps must figure out where they are, but a straightforward sales cycle management process can help them get there.
How to Tell the Difference Between Qualified and Unqualified Leads
Many B2B marketers send all their leads to sales, but only 27% are perfect. ReachForce and Marketo say that sales reps don’t follow up on half of marketing leads.
Sales reps waste time trying to close deals they shouldn’t have gone after when the marketing team doesn’t tell the difference between qualified and bad leads.
One of the most common business problems is that sales and marketing aren’t working together correctly. This makes it hard to handle the sales funnel.
Problems with the data
Data comes from many places, like CRM, the company website, marketing efforts, and even those working on the sales and marketing teams.
Managing the sales process can be challenging if the data is separated or doesn’t match up. It’s worse to have wrong information than none at all, and it poses several risks to the business:
Reps may waste time on leads that aren’t a good fit, putting time into deals that probably won’t close.
When sales forecasts aren’t correct, it’s hard to make accurate projections against revenue goals.
The team may not have a complete picture of leads, so they must do more follow-up.
It will be hard to measure past efforts and decide where to make changes, even if all of the company’s data is stored in one place and communication between the sales and marketing teams isn’t clear.
How to Make a Sales Funnel for a New Business
Starting new businesses often have the most trouble setting up a sales funnel management process. Without much past data, drawing its shape is random and likely wrong.
For sales funnel management to work, a company needs to figure out the steps it needs to take to close leads, which is hard to do when it doesn’t have any guides.
New businesses usually don’t have enough resources to spend time and money on sales funnel management or hire an experienced sales leader to lead the effort.
When this happens, they usually make a process that works for them based on their gut feelings and what people say.
Best Practices for Managing the Sales Funnel
Sales flow management means constant work and improvement. Firms must do the following to get the most out of it:
Make sure you can see the pipeline.
For sales, marketing, and leadership teams to truly see the pipeline, they need to be able to view real-time data.
Everyone should be able to see the steps, conversion rates, and sales velocity from the top to the bottom of the funnel.
Use insights from the data to make the funnel work better.
When a company has complete insight into its pipeline, it can track results and change the sales process as needed.
Marketing campaigns, customer reviews, sales reports, and website traffic are just some data sources teams can use to determine what they can do better and what they should focus on more.
Make the sales funnel more uniform.
Standardization happens slowly. As teams eliminate methods that aren’t making the business enough money, they’ll try out others until they find one that works.
Making a sales plan from tried-and-true strategies and best practices will ensure all teams follow the same steps and make it easier to train new reps.
At every stage of the funnel, nurture leads.
When leads get to the sales team, they should know about the company and be qualified because of the marketing materials. However, different ways of engaging customers are needed at each process stage.
Initially, marketing automation saves time and finds leads that are already approved based on simple rules. As prospects move through the funnel, they need more and more care.
Make the sales process easy to use.
A process that is both smooth and automatic is called frictionless sales.
Businesses should try to make it easy for people to buy from them without lowering service or goods.
Process automation saves time and work for tasks unrelated to selling, like scoring leads, analyzing data, and dividing customers into groups. This makes it easier to handle the sales funnel.
Tracking the Sales Funnel
To run a business’s sales process as smoothly as possible, the people in charge need to pay close attention to these numbers:
How many leads, MQLs, and SQLs are there?
- Rate of lead conversion
- The most common deal size
- Number of sales
- Speed of sales
- Rate of wins
- Value over a customer’s whole life
Rate of retention
For a complete picture of how well or poorly their sales funnel works, companies should also look at qualitative measures, like how responsive their customers are, how well-known their brand is, and how people feel about it.
Tools for managing the sales funnel that works
Now that everything is digital, a sales stack with the right tools for a company’s processes makes all the difference in how well a sales organization does.
CRM
Software for managing customer relationships (CRM), like Salesforce, is essential to any sales flow management plan.
Your sales funnel doesn’t have to be planned from the start because the CRM system automatically gathers and stores information about your customers. You can then use this information to build your funnel.
As customers meet with reps and buy goods or services, CRM tools also let you move them through different stages of the deal cycle. You’ll always know where they are in the sales process that way.
Software for Sales Engagement
Software for sales interaction is meant to help reps quickly qualify deals and boost their conversion rates.
They give sales reps tools like dynamic email templates, automated follow-up routines, and branded sales materials that make it easier for them to talk to customers.
Like most programs, engagement software lets businesses record and look at all their sales reps’ conversations with customers during the sales cycle. This helps them figure out what’s working and what needs work.
Set up, price, and quote (CPQ)
Companies can automate setting up products and giving sales quotes with CPQ software. This makes it easier for workers to be honest and accurate with their pricing with prospects.
Reps can show potential buyers that they are organized and ready by automating quotes, contracts, proposals, and other papers. This gives them an edge over competitors during the negotiation process.
The DealRoom
DealRoom, a digital sales room tool, is very helpful for sales teams that don’t have a unified way of managing their sales funnel.
DealRoom brings together all of the sales team’s tasks, including (most importantly) talking to each other. It can be challenging for sales workers to keep track of multiple deals with multiple decision-makers.
DealRoom removes the need to organize and track things by hand by putting all the details and people involved in sales conversations in one digital place.
