How a well-crafted Sales Funnel makes your Inbound Marketing more profitable
As a business owner or manager, you’ll know that every customer you bring into your business comes at a cost.
There’s your sign above the door… the phone for making outbound calls… the wages for your sales team… your website… your outbound marketing…
Ka-ching!
Ka-ching!
Ka-ching!
That’s the reality of business. We all live with it.
But what if you had the ability to change this reality?
Crockford Carlisle Brisbane can design and implement profitable Sales Funnels that are customised for your business.
What is a Sales Funnel – and why do you need one?
Put simply: You don’t want to have your talented, enthusiastic sales people spending their time on potential buyers who are not properly qualified.
Sure, by ‘talking to anyone and everyone’ they will get some over the line. Even cold calling can work. Sales is a numbers game, right?
But your troops will get many MORE sales over the line if they are talking to Sales Qualified Leads.
SQLs are people who:
- Are already convinced that they need your type of product or service
- Already know many of the benefits your business offers
- Have indicated that they are the decision-maker
- Have a need that is clearly defined
- Have a problem that needs to be solved now, or in the very near future
Finding these Sales Qualified Leads for your sales team is what a well-crafted Sales Funnel will do for your business.
Ensuring best practice when developing your business’s Sales Funnels
Your potential customers are not stupid. They are discerning. They have been around the block. They don’t want to feel like they’re being ‘sold to’.
That means the online content, emails and premium content that you send them MUST be carefully crafted to high standards.
Developing your Sales Funnels requires expertise across a range of skill sets. It requires strategic thinking, sales experience, communications expertise, and digital analysis.
Working with Crockford Carlisle, you’ll enjoy a double-whammy advantage:
- As a digital agency, Crockford Carlisle has the expertise to make your website content, UX, and Marketing Automation sing.
- As a marketing agency, Crockford Carlisle has the know-how to charm the socks off your potential buyers.
The people who will pull it all together for you include:
- Strategy Manager
- Copywriter
- Web Designer
- Web Coder
- Digital Analyst
- SEO Strategist
- AdWords Specialist
- HubSpot Technologist
It is a powerful combination. It is what you need to develop profitable, high-converting Inbound Sales Funnels.
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey
Your potential buyers don’t suddenly wake up, realise they have a problem, leap out of bed and scurry off to buy from you. Or wait anxiously by the phone for your sales call.
Life would be awesomely different if that were the case. For starters, you wouldn’t be sitting here reading this.
In reality, your potential buyers go through a three-stage journey to get to the point of being ready to hand over their money.
Stage 1: The Awareness stage
These people may buy at some point. But right now, you don’t want your sales time spending time with them. That’s because they are still:
- Figuring out that they want to achieve something
- Researching it
- Reading about it
- Talking to their friends
- Looking it up on the Google Machine
The Awareness stage in your Sales Funnel
We create and promote content for your website that will attract people at this early stage. It is carefully written to answer their questions, give them a deeper understanding, and begin the process of showing them the value of your brand over that of your competitors.
Once they have consumed some initial content, we automatically email them to offer them more. This contact deepens their engagement — and gives us the opportunity to subtly showcase your expertise and quality.
While this is happening, your sales team do not lift a finger.
It all bubbles along in the background, with the entire process being handled beautifully thanks to Marketing Automation.
Stage 2: The Consideration stage
Things are warming up now. These people have moved past the early phase, and are now have a better idea of what they want.
While they are still researching, now they’re looking for different content. Their view has narrowed, and they are considering their options.
Now, they are interested in:
- Reading reviews
- Comparing similar products or services
- Understanding the difference between option “A” and option “B”
- Pressing their noses against shop windows, looking wistfully at the display
The Consideration stage in your Sales Funnel
Thanks to our expertise in Marketing Automation, these people will have been sorted into segmented lists, based on preferences that we set after discussions with your sales team.
(You can learn more about our role as a marketing automation agency here)
The content we serve up to them will be specific to their profile. So while your competitors are wasting time sending out generic ‘e-Blasts’, you will be connecting with potential customers in a meaningful way.
Your email open rates will go up. You will build your brand. You will win the confidence of your potential buyers.
And even at this stage, because this nurturing process is so beautifully automated, your sales people are still not spending any time on it.
Instead, they are freed up to focus on the people who are at the final stage of your Sales Funnel.
Step 3: The Decision stage
These people know what they want, and are ready to make a buying decision. They now need to decide WHO they will buy from.
At this stage, they are interested in:
- Case studies of projects you have handled
- Customer reviews
- Vendor comparisons
- Pricing
- Availability/delivery
The Decision stage in your Sales Funnel
They are now a Sales Qualified Lead – someone that your sales team will be mad-keen to talk to. Your Marketing Automation will be set up so that your team are notified.
Before they pick up the phone, your team can check the CRM and see a full history of:
- The pages they have looked at on your site
- The articles they have read on your blog
- The emails they have opened
- The videos they have watched
- The products/services they are interested in, and
- The types of problems and challenges that they need solved
This intelligence puts your sales people in the box seat.
No more fumbling around in the dark for them!
They can get right down to what’s important — the specific problems your potential buyer has and how you can solve it.
Clearly, with a well-crafted Sales Funnel in place, it is going to be MUCH easier to get your numbers up and grow your business.
Talk to Crockford Carlisle about your Website Design
No matter where you are in Australia, Crockford Carlisle’s Brisbane-based website design team are here to help. We welcome your call on 07 3891 3800.
And by the way, that’s another thing you’ll notice about the way we work. You won’t get an agency ‘sales pitch’. Right from the first “Say g’day” meeting, the conversation will be about your business and what you want to achieve.
We’ll explore ideas. Look at your competitors. And see what we can see to set you on the right path.
From there, if you feel comfortable with our approach, we’ll come back to you with a proposal to build the responsive, well-designed website you need that speaks to your buyers and convinces them to buy.
“Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Brilliant idea!”