HOW TO GROW YOUR SMALL BUSINESS 101: SALES FUNNEL

Are you struggling with growing your business? Have you considered building a sales funnel to level up your game? Many businesses really struggle with positioning themselves for growth. Research however has shown one of the best strategies of countering this headache is building a sales funnel.

What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on their way to purchase. It is the tool that helps you turn that cold prospect into a hot lead, a closed deal and eventually a return customer. A well functioning sales funnel gives you insight into your potential customer’s thought process, challenges, and decisions.

There are several steps to a sales funnel, usually known as the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

Stage 1: Awareness and Discovery
This is the part of a customer’s journey where they are identifying their problem, prospecting and researching it. For example, they need to buy a vase for their home. So they now would be looking at the different options and types of vases and gathering more information about vases. At this point, they want to feel educated and confident about their problem and your response to it.

Stage 2: Research Stage
At this point, your customer is actively thinking about the problem and they are conducting competitive research to make sure your offering is the best solution for them. So for the vases customer, they are comparing your prices with other vendors.

Stage 3: Decision
This is the stage where your prospect is ready to make a decision and they are considering issues like warranty, add-ons, packaging and the like. Does your business offer delivery services for example? It is the little things that will push the customer over the edge and cause them to buy from you or your competition.

At the different stages, your customers need different things to help them through the process. With an informational post for stage 1, pros vs cons lists in stage 2 and a demo piece for stage 3, your prospect will be one step closer to converting to a closed sale.

Sales funnels for sure save you and your business from losing clients to the cracks. At WINGI, we help African businesses build supply chains and grow more efficiently. If you want to stay updated on business growth tips and lessons learnt, subscribe to our newsletter.

Author: Angela Thige