A sales funnel is needed for businesses to see the overall strategy of the customer journey from start to finish.
Start mapping out your own sales funnel by following this 5-step process.
5-Step Process for Sales Funnel
- Value Content
- Opening Offer
- Core Product/Service
- Repeat Business
- Exclusive Premium
1: Value Content
The first step is to plant the seeds and not sell anything yet.
Create value content that helps your target customers understand more about your product without asking for anything upfront.
There are 5 forms of value content that you can start creating today:
- Teach and share something useful and practical
- Why We Start This Business – Our Story
- Answer FAQs
- Testimonials
- Unique Advantage
These content be created in video, written word, and/or images. Once the content is ready, distribute it across your website, social media, and messages.
Teach and Share
Teach something and think from the angle of how you can help the customer, even if they don’t buy from you.
By creating useful and practical content, they will eventually come to you whenever they need help as they already see your business as a trusted company.
Here are some examples:
Example 1 – A physiotherapist can share about the ways to prevent back pain by doing this 3 stretches
Example 2 – A car workshop can talk about 5 tips to maintain your car properly and prevent car breakdown
Example 3 – A beauty skin care product company can share the tips to prevent oily skin
Example 4 – A property developer can talk about the step by step guide to buy a new home for a first time home buyer
Example 5 – An education company can share the key consideration for selecting university courses before enrolling for the next 4-5 years
The easiest way is to think about what problems your customers could be facing, then teach them how to solve or prevent this.
By not selling, you are already indirectly selling and planting seeds for the long term.
Business Story
Bring your business to live by sharing what made you start this business.
Is it because you faced an unpleasant experience? Share that story and your audience will feel the passion and connects with your business emotionally.
Try this structure:
I was having “unpleasant experience” while “at location”
Then this thing happened….
Made me think why should we…..
Decided to start this to “solve xxx problem”
Follow this structure and start sharing your story in your website and social media.
Answer FAQs
Answer the common FAQs people have before buying.
Whenever a new prospect ask something that is not in your FAQ list, create the Q&A and expand your FAQs library.
Unique Advantage
What is something unique about your business?
This can be in the form of niching down:
e.g Warda cosmetics halal cosmetic beauty products
- Book depository only sells books online and more people are buying books from them rather than Amazon
Besides niching down, your business may have skills that other business does not have yet.
e.g Tesla electric cars
Brainstorm about your unique advantage and start producing content to educate your customers so they will associate your unique advantage with your business.
Testimonials
People buy people.
Use testimonials to ensure customers that your product or service can help solve their issue.
Having positive Google reviews is crucial as people will search for your brand name and read the reviews before deciding whether to buy.
Besides Google reviews, aim to collect video testimonials as these can be more authentic and convincing.
2: Opening Offer
How can a customer try your product without having to spend on the main product upfront?
Instead of selling the main product immediately to someone who has not done business with you before, start small with an opening offer and build from there.
Let customers test your product with an opening offer so they have the confidence to buy more from your business in the future.
Example 1 – An aesthetic clinic can start with facial or laser promotion for first trial.
Example 2 – A car workshop can have air conditioning maintenance promotion.
Example 3 – An education company can create and sell an eBook for a low price entry.
Example 4 – An eCommerce brand can offer a product for $1 before upselling monthly subscription.
The goal in this stage is not to make money, it’s to build trust so you can make money in the next step – Core Product/Service.
3: Core Product/Service
Now we move on to the interesting stage, where you start making the profit.
Once they have seen your content and tried your opening offer, the next step is to get them try your core product/service. This is the main product you are currently selling in your business.
It’s much easier to convert your core product now as you have built trust in Step 1 and 2 of the customer journey.
4: Repeat Business
Once they have tried your core product, aim to maximize the lifetime value of a customer by having packages or create a loyalty system.
Example 1 – Starbucks having loyalty card to encourage repeat purchase.
Example 2 – A physiotherapist can create 10 sessions for a lower price than the core service.
Example 3 – An software company can give discounts if the customer sign up for 1 year instead of paying monthly.
Example 4 – An eCommerce brand can offer monthly subscription at a cheaper rate.
Try this, for those customers who have not bought from you in the past 6 months to 1 year, reach out to them via whatsapp/email and get them back with a special promotion.
These customers are so valuable because you don’t need to spend additional money on ads and they are more likely to return if you have delivered a great product/service previously.
5: Exclusive Premium
This is the high-end phase where only 5-10% of your customers will end up here.
Example 1 – A dental clinic can promote Invisalign instead of traditional braces.
Example 2 – A consulting business can do 1 to 1 consulting instead of group consulting.
Example 3 – An software company can have exclusive enterprise solution.
Example 4 – An eCommerce brand can create bundles of multiple products.
No matter what business you are running, create a “VIP” offer for the last stage of the funnel to fully maximize your revenue potential.
Conclusion
Starting building out these 5-step funnels for your business today!
If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@axceldigital.com