Note: From my work at InstallLogic.
I know that many salespeople will tell me that the Sales Funnel is alive and well. I know even more that they will tell me they walked a customer through the process last Thursday. However, I have to disagree because the Sales Funnel has now evolved to become what I like to call the Sales Net. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s do a review of the Sales Funnel.
Sales Funnel Basics
I’m sure we have all seen the graph below. It is basic version of the sales funnel but every company names the layers of it a little differently. The New Opportunity or Initial Contact is basically the first time a salesperson interacts with a potential customer. Then there is some Fact Finding or a Sales Lead when someone will continue to vet the new potential customer so see if the company in question has any services that might solve their problem. If the customer is moved to the next step, then a solution is developed for them because the need has been identified. Next this solution is presented to the customer to see if the customer believes the product or service in question really will solve their problem. Then it is obviously evaluated by both the customer and the business depending if it needs to be modified.
Finally, if everything is still working out, there is a negotiation on price and time of services rendered. After all of that a product or service is purchase. At the end you see Account Maintenance but I believe that is only done to restart the funnel for a different product or service from the same company or to evaluate the service used.
What’s Wrong with This?
This is the million dollar question. I believe that there is something majorly wrong with the old Sales Funnel. It isn’t just the titles or the colors. The fact is, we don’t know exactly when any of these touch points are happening.
New Media Makes Tracking Sales Harder
There are problems tracking on almost every level of the funnel caused by new media:
- New Opportunity & Initial Communication could start on social media. A New Opportunity could be discovered on Twitter with an Initial Communication on Facebook. You may say this part is easy to track and on occasion it is. But 9 times out of ten, people don’t have the same Twitter Handle as a Facebook Profile name. So, how do you know you are working with the same person?
- Fact Finding is usually done by the customer without consultation from the business. The customer usually does some fact finding on their own by doing a Google Search on a product or service they are curious about. This can sometimes be tracked by PPC or SEO results but that doesn’t pinpoint the customers specifically.
- Develop Solution can’t really be traced either because customers sometimes contact a business through social media or a contact page on a website to say that they need a solution to ‘x’ problem. Most of the time a customer knows the solution for their problem but they may be checking to see if there is a better solution through their friends on Facebook and Twitter or merely asking in person.
- Proposed Solution Here we have the first actually traceable part of a sales process because this is when a customer goes to a store to talk about what kind of solutions they believe will help their problem. Sometimes a customer just wants a few more suggestions but most of the time they have come to your store with a purpose of either purchasing or questioning a real live salesperson.
- Negotiation & Purchase Order If you are lucky the customer likes either their own solution or your proposed solution enough that they will continue to negotiate a price and finally purchase.
Did you notice that only the last 3 or 4 steps are measurable by traditional tactics? How do you work with a contact that you don’t even know is looking at your product? This is why I created the Sales Net idea.
Sales Net
The Sales Net states that you need to have a broad marketing message so that your customers will find you when they decide to go out and look for your product or service.
You should think about the Sales Net like fishing for customers online. You want to cast a wide net to catch the most interested customers. The idea of having a wide net shouldn’t scare off local customers; in fact, your net only needs to be as wide as local search marketing.
Businesses need a Sales Net because as you have seen above, New Media has made it so we don’t know where a customer starts to enter our sales process till the end. So, you want to be out where your customers are searching for a solution and then take them where you want them to be, i.e., your business.
What does this mean for your Business?
Since about 70% of people look for businesses online before they look at the YellowPages, think about your businesses’ online marketing strategy. A good internet marketing strategy is key to having a successful Sales Net to catch all of your customers. A business should be in industry forms, customer forms, and on Facebook and Twitter (if necessary). A primary need is having a strong website full of user friendly descriptions of your products and services. A strong website must also be easy to crawl by the search engines because if you can’t rank then you can’t bank on business.
Finally, I recommend that you not only get online and make it easy for everyone to find you but go out and make friends. This doesn’t mean start a Facebook page and wait. It means that your business needs to be in the directories and that you need to market your Facebook and Twitter Pages to current customers. If you don’t market you new Website it will be like having a store location no one can find. How will anyone know you have a great website or Facebook page if you don’t tell them?
If there are holes in your marketing strategies then those are customers that are escaping the net quickly.
Seems like a lot…Where do I start?
If you are thinking this headline then you should definitely start by looking at your website. For instance, if you have a Flash website then that is a HUGE hole in your Sales Net because these websites are hard for search engines to crawl. Also, it’s important to get your business listed in directories because if the search engines can’t find your website, at least they can find your business through a related keyword.
Your thoughts?
We would love to hear your thoughts about this concept. Leave us your comments below.
