Sales funnel in banking. What the manager should know about the sales funnel. How to build a funnel: understanding the main indicators

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You can hunt in different ways. Someone runs in a crowd after one mammoth, and someone sets up 500 traps, hangs 1000 baits and barely manages to carry the corpses of unfortunate animals home. It seems to me that the second method is better, so today we’ll talk about it and figure out what a sales funnel is, what it is for and what it consists of (all with examples).

What is a sales funnel?

There are two chairs of opinion on this matter. Old-school marketers believe that this is such a visualization of consumer behavior on the way from the first contact with a brand or product to purchase. There is an alternative point of view, it lies in the fact that a sales funnel is such a technology for building sales by the marketer or manager himself.

The bottom line is that at the first stage the product is offered a large number customers, but only a small part of the initial flow reaches the last one - the transaction itself, those who are really ready to make a purchase and die for the idea. Therefore, the funnel metaphor itself is not very accurate - the holes between the first and last stage, through which potential customers “flow out”, are not taken into account. It is more correct to compare the whole thing with a multi-stage filter.

What is a sales funnel for?

Paradoxically, to sell effectively. It helps to build the logic of working with potential clients, select the right tools for it and look for weaknesses in the system.

Sales funnel stages

In general, it is impossible to talk about any specific rules and standards for building a funnel, because everything is tied to a specific situation. The funnel of the classic sales department and the SMM department will be very different, but you can still find something in common - they are based on the same ageless AIDA model. The abbreviation stands for Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (attention-interest-desire-action). Let's see how it works.

To attract attention

First, your ad works - when it catches the eye of a potential buyer, it captures himAttention. The addressee of the advertising message becomes interested in the product and he enters into primary communication with you, directly (call, communication with an employee) or indirectly (through studying the site, social networks). At this stage, cold calls, search promotion, contextual advertising or advertising in social networks can work. If your offer is of interest to a potential client, he will definitely follow the link or listen to your manager. Further - more interesting.

Excitement of interest

At this stage, the client must understand that you are able to solve his problem - this will arouse in himinterest. To do this, you need to study in detail his need for a product: why he may need it and what he expects from him. After that, you should provide a potential buyer with a solution to his problem, while interest has not faded yet. At this stage, your managers usually send offer. If the client found you in the search or in another way, then the content of the site works for the managers. Its task is to fully reveal the essence and uniqueness of your offer.

Decision-making

In fact, there are two solutions here (oh, those homonyms). The first decision a business gives to a potential buyer is to say “yes man, we can solve your problem”. After that, the client evaluates the proposal and makes its verdict - accepts the very secondsolution. This stage is followed by negotiating or evaluating the offer. Either the manager and the client discuss and agree on a commercial offer, or the potential buyer weighs all the pros and cons.

Action

Everything is simple here: final approval and order. Moreover, the first step may not be present at all in the funnel, if, for example, we are talking about selling anything in an online store.

These are four basic stages that are in any funnel, but in fact there can be any number of them, it all depends on the specific situation, business model and company capabilities. Each of the stages can be divided into several smaller ones. For example, an attention grab might consist of a cold call, data collection, and short story about the offer, or it can take place without the direct participation of the company's employees at all and exclusively on the client's side. The same is true for the rest of the stages. The proposal itself can be discussed for a long time and adjusted to the requirements and needs of a potential buyer, or it can be standard and unchangeable, in which case all the work on evaluating the benefits falls on the end user.

Sales Funnel Examples

Let's see how everything looks in practice. Let's analyze the case of the classic scheme with cold calls, an online store and social networks.

Classic "chills"

Let's say we have a business that sells some coffee machines for coffee shops that everyone wants but doesn't know about yet.

At the first stage, the manager looks for a potential client, collects contacts and enters them into CRM. Next comes the first call, which is needed to identify the decision maker. In our case, it will most likely be the boss of all the bosses - the owner of the institution. 100 people called.

After the first call, the second stage begins. If the manager has found out everything that is needed from a potential client, then he prepares a commercial offer. Then the proposal is discussed and agreed upon, and changes are made to it. The output is the final version. You can make an appointment or decide everything remotely - there are no rules here and you have to dance from the stove, that is, look at the situation. Out of 100 calls, 10 were successful.

The third stage is decision making. The client has a final, final and irrevocable CP. Now he needs to periodically remind himself of himself and gently push him to the desired outcome of the negotiations, otherwise everything can drag on for a long time. Out of 10 potential customers, 2 agreed to buy a coffee machine.

Then comes final stage: the client (let him be one) signs everything, you get paid, everyone is happy, music plays.

We count the conversion at each stage. Since the example is conditional, this is easy to do. Out of 100 calls at the first stage, 10 paid off. So, the conversion is equal to:

10 CP / 100 calls x 100% = 10%

In the same way, indicators for the remaining stages are calculated. This helps track down issues. If at one stage the conversion is much lower than at the others, then there is a high probability that something is going wrong. What exactly depends on the situation. The manager may not understand the needs of the client when offering a CP, be not insistent enough, or vice versa, push too hard.

What about the sales funnel of an online store?

Everything is more complicated here. Customers come to the site from search, clicks on contextual advertising, direct transitions and and social networks. At the same time, a tiny percentage of people are ready to make a purchase right away, and this is normal. Therefore, the sales funnel is built differently. Let's say we have a store that sells fashionable clothes.

At the first stage, we capture the attention of the visitor through the mentioned SEO, context, SMM and other acquisition channels. Ideally, a potential buyer immediately becomes an actual one, but in reality, everything is not so rosy. Therefore, the main task is to subscribe a person to a mailing list or a group of social networks.

This is the start of the second stage of the sales funnel - if a person subscribes, then he is interested in our store and our clothes. Our task is to arouse interest in a particular proposal and involve it in interaction with us. In the case of a clothing store, you can send notifications about new arrivals or collections from fashion gurus. In social networks, the tactics are different: you can dilute promotional announcements with entertaining content - it engages subscribers well.

It is difficult to single out a separate third stage - in the case of an online clothing store, the decision to purchase is most often made spontaneously and is directly tied to interest.

Well, the last fourth stage is the order. Here people also fall off, and your task is to return them to the abandoned cart. If someone buys from you, you can rejoice, but not for long, because the client must be retained and led to the purchase again. To do this, simply repeat everything in a circle. Plus, you have to count average check and analyze the conversion at each stage.

How to analyze a sales funnel?

We already touched on this issue when we talked about examples. You need to calculate:

• conversion.
• The cost of attracting and "leading" a customer through the sales funnel.
• Average bill and number of purchases.

If you called a hundred potential customers, and only one became a client, then the total conversion will be 1%.

The average check is considered even easier. This is the total revenue divided by the number of people who made the purchase. Let's say you bought three TVs. One for 10,000 rubles, the second for 20,000, and the third for 30,000. Then the average check will be:

(10,000 + 20,000 + 30,000) / 3 \u003d 20,000 rubles.

Sales funnel analysis is needed to understand which stages should be worked out again. Your task is to constantly grow, increasing the conversion, the number of purchases and the average bill. This is where the sales funnel helps. If there is a problem at any stage of "leading" the client, you will lose money and the business will not grow. Plus, knowing how many leads you have at each stage and how many of them become actual, you can make plans to grow your business. At the same time, the numbers are taken not from the ceiling, but from CRM and metrics.

A sales funnel is an essential tool for running any business. It helps to analyze the effectiveness of the sales department, customer acquisition channels, and formulate a business development strategy. Without a clear system, you can’t track at what stage you lose the most customers and why, you can’t adjust your advertising strategy, and it’s very difficult to make sales plans. Therefore, the sales funnel is our everything.

About what a sales funnel is - 6 stages of the buyer cycle + useful tips on how to build it.

People involved in sales know how important it is to form a sufficient client base with good purchasing power.

That is why often in stores, salons, agencies and other organizations selling goods / services, all efforts are rushed to improve sales performance.

Competent managers use various tools to manage trading, analyze clients (potential and real), and solve other important tasks.

But, alas, not all managers and sellers are literate.

Some don't even know what is a sales funnel and how to use it correctly.

If you are still not familiar with this marketing term, then it's time to fix it in order to become a true professional in your field.

Who coined the term "sales funnel" and what is it?

You will probably be surprised, like me, when you learn that the concept of "sales funnel" is quite old.

It was proposed to use Elias St. Elmo Lewis and it happened back in 1898.

True, Lewis called it a consumer funnel, but the essence of the term did not change from this.

The same Lewis described the main stages that the buyer goes through before making the final purchase:

• familiarity with the product / service;
• interest in her;
• the formed desire to make a purchase;
• specific action.

Today, in marketing classes, teachers explain that sales funnel is description of the sales process and the distribution of customers by the stages of their purchase - from the initial stage (acquaintance) to the final stage (directly making a purchase).

In English specialized literature, this term is written as sales funnel.

Of course, many sellers do without specialized marketing knowledge, using completely different principles in their work: when it’s the usual selling of goods and starving the client, when it’s fraud or something else.

But, as the experience of my friends and acquaintances working in the field of sales shows, scientific approach to business and knowledge of specialized terms help to increase sales.

In any case, the knowledge gained will definitely not interfere with you.

The sales funnel is an inverted pyramid

If we talk about the image of a sales funnel, then this is an inverted pyramid, a cone or a vessel (which image you like best).

The upper part of the figure (the widest) shows how many customers are involved in the initial stage of the sale, that is, they get acquainted with the product.

But the lower part (much narrower than the upper one) shows how many customers made a sale, that is, spent their money.

Based on the compilation of this table, you can find out the following:

1. How many customers must be at the initial stage so that you sell at the final stage required amount goods/services and earned a sufficient amount of money.
2. How many potential buyers will be screened out at each stage.
3. What actions can be taken to reduce the number of dropouts and retain more customers at the end stage to increase your income.

The task of each seller is to ensure that as many buyers as possible get from the initial stage of the auction to the final stage, because the income of the organization involved in the sale of goods / services depends on this.

By compiling this funnel, you can correctly calculate everything and take timely steps to reduce client losses.

The Sales Funnel: Stages of the Buying Cycle by Elias St. Elmo Lewis

It is clear that in the days of Elias St. Elmo Lewis (late 19th century), the bidding process itself was much simpler than it is today.

The buyer was not so spoiled with offers, he had less temptations, and the competition among sellers was not so serious.

That is why Lewis formed only 4 stages of the buyer cycle, which make up the sales funnel:

Acquaintance.

A person gets the first impression of a product / service either through advertising, or thanks to the recommendation of other buyers or because of a casual personal acquaintance (walked aimlessly along shopping center I saw a beautiful dress.

After getting acquainted with the product / service, the consumer makes a conclusion for himself whether it is interesting to him or not.

If not, then at the second stage, the failed buyer will be eliminated, if yes, then he goes to the third stage.

In addition to the thoughts “oh, what a beautiful dress,” a completely conscious desire appears: “it would be nice to buy it.”

If the seller can keep the client at this stage, then he will move on to the final, fourth.

Action.

That is, the buyer still makes a purchase, allowing the seller to earn.

What does a sales funnel look like according to modern marketers?

The four-stage sales funnel has long been accepted in marketing circles as an axiom.

Recent studies prove that the psychology of today's buyer is more complex, so it is more efficient to make a funnel that consists of not 4, but 6 stages of the buying cycle.

Managers and salespeople who want to make money today should be aware of these 6 steps:

Openness.

This stage includes buyers who gravitate (still unconsciously) to the purchase, so they are ready to experience it.

Food for brain.

Information analysis.

If we are not talking about an impulsive purchase “I saw - fell in love - bought”, then any consumer will try to collect as much information as possible about the product / service of interest to him in order to make an informed decision.

Survey of other opinions.

The buyer can ask his friends if they purchased the goods/services he is interested in and whether they are satisfied with them, or read reviews on the Internet.

1. Making a purchase- the consumer is still convinced that he needs the offered thing or service and pays money for it.

Assessment of the completed purchase.

Elias St. Elmo Lewis did not have this stage, the end stage was the action, but today's sellers must understand how important it is how the buyer evaluates what he has purchased.

It depends on whether he becomes regular customer or not, that is, you can make money on it once or this process will be regular.

How to build a sales funnel?

Let's look at an example of how to build a sales funnel so that you can use it in your work.

Let's say you're a manager who needs to sell a new product.

To do this, you will need to do the following:

1. You mail out 40 promotional offers to all your loyal customers.
2. Only 20 people from this list were interested in the proposal and wanted to know more about it.
3. Through a personal meeting phone call, sending an advertising booklet or in another convenient way, you provide full information about the offer.
4. 15 people, after a detailed study of the information provided, decided that they were interested in this proposal, but they would like to think about it more, 5 immediately refused.
5. 9 out of 15 people passed to the final stage, who actually bought what you offered them.

To properly build a sales funnel for your business,

Here you see good manager it is difficult to do without knowledge, what is a sales funnel, because this knowledge helps him to better understand consumers and thus increase his own income.

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What is a sales funnel - 6 stages of funnel formation + 5 key points.

Every new business owner should know what is a sales funnel.

This is one of the main business tools that allows you to succeed in.

What is a funnel and what does it include?

How to analyze your business?

What is a sales funnel: concept and structure

The concept of "sales funnel" is conceptual in marketing, and means, first of all, the path that the consumer goes through when making a purchase.

This includes attracting attention, making a purchasing decision, and directly purchasing a product or service.

Knowledge of the main stages and principles of the funnel is necessary for businessmen who want to take their business to a new level and attract as many consumers of goods and services as possible.

Today there is a situation where the number of some things in many respects exceeds demand.

To sell them, you have to organize various receptions, make plans, pay attention to advertising, an attractive description of production products on sites on the Internet.

Before buying, the consumer goes through four stages:

1. Capturing attention with ads or offers.
2. Warming up interest.
3. The desire to receive the offered product and use it.
4. An action is a visit to a store or website to make a purchase.

The main goal of the seller is to transform the initial interest and strong desire to purchase the offered item or service.

You can do this by applying methods that correspond to each stage of the sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel: stages

A manager involved in attracting people, as well as distributing goods and services, must know the main six stages of a sales funnel.

6 stages of the sales funnel:

Entering into the database and creating an interesting trade offer.

Before you start calling potential buyers, you need to form a base consisting of at least 50-100 people.

This is not a lot, since out of this number of people no more than 5 will agree to a meeting.

Identification of the decision maker.

During the first call, the sales manager should find out the name of the person responsible for making the purchase decision.

Getting the necessary information.

At this stage, it is necessary to enter into a dialogue with the person who makes the purchase decision and interest him, while obtaining the information necessary to draw up a purchase offer.

You should prepare for the fact that the buyer may begin to express his objections to the purchase, and at this moment you should answer all questions, convince and interest the offer.

Meeting scheduling.

During the meeting, a product presentation is often made.

More often than not, however, the decision maker cannot meet on the day of the call because they want to know more information.

Meeting confirmation.

The day before the appointment, you should call the consumer and remind him of it.

Meeting, presentation and sale.

Based on the data obtained during telephone conversation, it is necessary to involve the buyer in the conversation as actively as possible and interest him in the offer.

After the transaction, thank you for the purchase.

Considering the steps, you can answer the question: what is a sales funnel.

First of all, it is a well-planned strategy to attract the persuasion of a person to make a purchase.

The main principle of the sales funnel is that the more people you call and consult, the more direct customers and consumers will appear.

Out of a hundred people, up to 5 people agree to a deal.

By calling 200 people, you can increase the number of successful transactions to 10.

Sales funnel scripts

Scripts are very closely related to sales funnels, and are used by successful managers to increase the conversion of funnels when interacting with a buyer and presenting a product.

A script is a scenario that a manager or administrator of an online store must act on in order to succeed.

The script is drawn up on a piece of paper and laid out in a conspicuous place for convenience.

There are two commonly known types of scripts:

1. For an incoming call.
2. For an outgoing call.

The manager must clearly understand the differences in conducting an incoming and outgoing telephone conversation.

In the first case, you should introduce yourself, listen to the caller's question, and answer it in as much detail as possible.

If the call comes on behalf of the company, you should, first of all, do not forget to clarify whether the person can talk at the moment.

Many do not comply with this norm of etiquette and only cause irritation to people.

What is a sales funnel and why is it important?

Many underestimate the importance of the sales funnel and as a result have poor sales performance.

Some managers prefer to find people in other ways, however, direct, cold calls, the best option, guaranteed to give a certain number of buyers.

Key benefits of a sales funnel:

• Definition of the target audience.
• Competent construction and analysis of the process of attracting customers.
• Identification and elimination of weaknesses in the activities of the company as a whole.
• Calculation of the conversion of each stage of the funnel.
• Analysis and evaluation of business performance in general.

With the help of the correct construction of business processes and taking into account the action of the sales funnel, it is possible to achieve an increase in the efficiency of the company's activities several times.

How to build a sales funnel?

A sales funnel manager must focus on results, not just good performance, when doing performance analysis.

He personally should be interested in attracting more customers, which is possible if the employee's salary is made up of the official part and interest.

You need to draw up a plan and attract customers based on the stages of the sales funnel.

Consider the basic rules for using a funnel:

In a conspicuous place is a sheet with telephone conversation templates.

The template should contain options for solving any situations, the correct answers in case of doubt of the client and in case of refusal to purchase.

• A list of potential customers and those who agreed to a personal meeting and discussion of the proposed product is compiled.
• When making a call, be sure to introduce yourself and ask if the person can spare five minutes of their time.
• Try to get as accurate a yes or no answer as possible.
• If the client has agreed, you should thank him for the conversation and enter the number, along with the full name, into the database of real clients.

You need to fill the sales funnel regularly, only constant work will allow you to achieve high results.

A competent sales manager should monitor the filling of databases: a general list of potential customers and those who agreed to make a purchase.

Each agreed client in the database should be recorded in a separate column.

Name attached, convenient time for the call and the main wishes of the client to the purchased goods and services.

About the sales funnel and its efficient use- detailed in the video:

The funnel can also be used to:

Estimates of the company's sales dynamics.

Using the funnel, it is very convenient to compare performance indicators for the current and previous months.

Employee performance checks.

The director of the company must clearly see that 100 people were called, of which 5 agreed.

If an employee claims that he called 500 people, but only three people purchased the goods, it can be concluded that the job duties were not properly performed.

Sales forecast for the coming months.

According to the results of sales and customer calls in the first days of the month, we can conclude that the measures taken will continue to be effective.

Every employee who makes cold calls should understand what is a sales funnel and strive to increase the positive dynamics.

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In companies that are in our consulting, we constantly count the numbers. Or rather, not even so.

Practice shows that quite often people's behavior diverges from expectations, which means that only numbers will help to see the true picture of “Everything is good”, “Everything is bad” or “You can live”.

And to count the numbers among the many tools, building a sales funnel helps us.

What stages of the sales funnel should be, by what criteria to determine them, and what it will give you in the end, we will analyze in this article.

what it is

The term sales funnel has been around for at least 100 years. It was invented and introduced into use by Elias St. Elmo Lewis (a very difficult name). He deduced the path by which each customer comes to purchase:

1. Acquaintance;
2. Interest;
3. A wish;
4. Action.

That is, the classic principle of trading and making a decision by the buyer to purchase, such a thinking funnel or, in a marketing term, “consumer funnel”.

And as you can see, in these stages there is a very big similarity with the correct preparation of advertising. Therefore, it is often called the “marketing funnel”.

We are still interested in how the sales funnel works in reality and why is everyone talking about it so much?

Sales funnel - this is the path that the client goes from the first contact with the product / service to the conclusion of the transaction, that is, the purchase. And all this is divided into stages.

In various literature, and on the Internet, I have come across different sales funnel schemes. And the classic 4 stages, and very long, consisting of more than 12.

In this article, I will tell you general guidelines on how to make a sales funnel, with examples. After studying, you yourself will understand what should be correct structure sales funnels in your company, which stages to include and in what sequence.

WE ARE ALREADY MORE THAN 29,000 people.
TURN ON

I do not want and I will not

We constantly encounter riots on the ship among the salesmen when we announce that funnel work is now required.

This is fine. After all, the hidden becomes clear. Do any of you simply want to show the skeletons in your closet?

Now I'm talking more about cases where a sales funnel is implemented in wholesale or retail.

With the introduction of a funnel on the Internet, there is almost no such rebellion. There, and so everything is easily monitored, and most often without their participation. Not so offline.

Employees count everything manually (entered, bought, passed, etc.). For this, they will hate us and you, although part of the process can now be easily automated.

But this is all from a misunderstanding of what a sales funnel is for. From a misunderstanding that in business it is necessary not only to count sales, profit, marginality, but also indicators from the stages of the sales funnel.

After all, in this way you can see the weaknesses in your company and understand what needs to be emphasized at this time. And, as a rule, sales managers do not need an analysis of the sales funnel, they are “not up to it”.

Classics of the genre

If you ask me about the universal sales stages in marketing (bypassing), then you can depict them as levels. 8 classic consecutive levels:

1. Learn about the offer. Your first contact with a client;
2. Choice definition. Persuading a customer to choose your product;
3. Purchasing intention. Formation of the task to buy;
4. Make a deal. Registration of the transaction;
5. Intention to pay. Everything is clear here;
6. Receipt of the product. Including evaluation of the success of your purchase;
7. Making a repeat purchase. Provided that everything was pleasant;
8. Making purchases on an ongoing basis. Provided that everything is VERY pleasant.

Looks difficult, right? I agree. When studying this methodology (5 years ago), I myself puzzled over how all this “nonsense” can be implemented in ordinary business. That's why plain language, on the example of b2b business:

1. Making cold calls (learning about the offer);
2. (definition with choice);
3. Dispatch (intent to purchase);
4. Signing the contract and issuing an invoice (closing a deal);
5. Payment (intention to pay);
6. Shipment of goods (receipt of the product);
7. Repeat purchase;
8. Making purchases on an ongoing basis.

Or here is another example, for a more typical situation, the sales stages of a retail store:

1. The client saw the advertisement (learning about the offer);
2. I went to the store (definition with a choice);
3. Tried on a thing (intention to purchase);
4. Decided to purchase it (deal);
5. Paid for it (intention to pay);
6. Received/began to use (receipt of the product);
7. Returned for another purchase (re-purchase);
8. Became regular customer(make purchases on an ongoing basis).

Evaluation of each stage

A simple and logical question arises, how to calculate the sales funnel? How to calculate each stage? In percentages, pieces, or like in that advertisement: “How much to hang in grams?”.

Let's analyze the assessment of each stage using the example of the b2b sector, where the primary contact begins with the Internet funnel, and then goes to the sales department.

№	Stage	Way	Index
1	Learn about the offer	in Yandex	Number of transitions in pieces*
2	Definition with choice	abandoned	Number of applications in pieces*
3	Purchasing Intention	Sending	Number of sent CPs in pieces
4	Make a deal	Negotiation and signing of the contract	Number of issued invoices or sent contracts in pieces
5	Intention to pay	Payment for goods	Number of invoices sent
6	Receipt of the product	Shipment of goods
7	Making a repeat purchase	Repeat purchases	Number of repeated shipments in pieces
8	Making purchases on a regular basis	Regular purchases (from 3 purchases and more)	Number of shipments in pieces

The period of time for which you define these indicators is most often measured either “Per day”, or “Month”, or “Per quarter”.

For example, we measure “Applications” every day, but we already measure “Repeat purchases” once a month.

Closer to d(t)el

You have weathered the most boring but important part of this article. Now let's sum up, consider what you can do with this miracle and how to create a sales funnel for yourself.

Sales funnel

And now, you probably have a question what does the sales funnel look like in the end? So, if everything is filled out, counted, and drawn, the visualization of the sales funnel will be like this:

It turns out that at each stage the number of actions is less and less, the funnel principle is applied, hence the concept.

People get lost, leave, change their mind at every stage when moving towards a purchase (top-down). And already here it is clear what are the weakest points in your company. Let's move on to the most important thing - how to make a sales funnel.

1. Define your milestones

The funnel above is built on the example of those stages that we considered earlier.

In your case, the structure of the sales funnel may be different, the stages may be different or there may be more, because it all depends on the number of touches with a potential client and how loyal he is to your product/service.

It is not difficult to identify them. Just think about which ones are the most important to you.

Usually these are the ones on which customers make their decisions - to buy or not. Or if you need a maximum program, then write out all the possible stages at which customers are lost and for this you need to know.

2. Measure performance

The hardest part of the job. Not alignment, but systemic filling of all stages of the funnel.

The keyword is systemic (read constant). Indeed, in practice, it is at this moment that failures most often occur, since the owner is not up to it, and managers and marketers do not want to process, believing that they already see everything perfectly (there are exceptions).

In such a case, if both you and your colleagues are “filoning”, you can implement the most primitive funnel of 2-4 stages.

Compiling and filling out this will not be difficult. Here is an offline simulation example:

Sales funnel example

3. Improve and increase

This is of course all good. You have numbers on your hands, but it’s easy not to look at them?! You need to work with them, namely to improve and increase.

This is the whole point of the sales funnel - to show weaknesses. Consider an example for each of these actions.

Example 1 - increase

And now the magic. Imagine a situation where you have 360,750 impressions of your contextual advertising per month.

At the exit, after going through all the stages, customers bring 280,303 rubles. Now let's imagine that we just took and increased advertising costs by 60%, and thereby increased the number of impressions, which as a result gave us 354,545 rubles. Which is 26% more than the previous figure.

Working with the sales funnel

Please note that by increasing each stage of the funnel by the nth percentage, you can not only increase sales, but simply explode them.

And this does not always require such a large increase in the form of 60%, somewhere it will be enough from 1% to make 1.2% and your sales will grow by one and a half to two times.

And here's another one for you scary picture what another sales funnel on the site might look like:

Website sales funnel

Example 2 - improve

For example, your employee makes 30 cold calls every day. Where only 10 are successful and it gets to the decision maker.

Everyone else gets stuck at the "Secretary's Pass" stage. And this means that the conversion from a call to a connection with a decision maker is 33% (1o out of 30). In this case, the right strategy is not to increase the number of calls, but rather to improve the conversion rate.

So that out of 30 calls, we passed secretaries 66% (20 out of 30). This kind of improvement will give us a doubling of sales.

Another example from this process. Managers issue 100 invoices per month for a total amount of 1 million rubles (with an average check of 10,000 rubles), of which only 50% is paid.

So we take and do everything possible to increase the number of payments to 60%. And it probably doesn't take much to do that. As a result, we will get 100,000 rubles more by simply increasing one stage by 10%.

Briefly about the main

The main advice of this article is not even that you need to know what the stages of the sales funnel are.

And not even that you need to paint it individually for your business. And the fact that many companies neglect this tool in vain, when it can give much more than it seems at first glance.

Otherwise, it turns out there is no difference: you invest in new advertisement or not, invest time in training managers or not.

Since if you do not analyze the indicators, and do not know how much the profit increased after that or how much the conversion increased from stage to stage, all this was done in vain. Business is about numbers, and not just profit with margins.

This article discusses marketing model“sales funnel”, its stages, goals, indicators, methods for calculating conversion and improving efficiency at each stage.

What is a sales funnel?

Sales funnel (sales funnel, purchase funnel)- a marketing model that describes the movement of the buyer through the stages of the sales process: from the first contact to the conclusion of the transaction.

The term was proposed in 1898. E. S. Lewis originally as a “consumer funnel”, which demonstrates the path of buyers from thinking to buying: acquaintance, interest, desire, action.

What does a sales funnel look like?

The graphic representation of the funnel resembles an inverted pyramid, which can be represented as follows:

In the professional literature one can find great amount interpretations of the sales funnel and its stages/stages, however, they are all similar in that the number of initial contacts at the entrance is much greater than the actual purchases at the exit.

If we explain this using the example above, then at the first stage there are people who have a need for our goods / services (Let's say there are 1000).

Of these, only a certain part knows about the existence of our store. (e.g. 700).

Naturally, not everyone who knows about us will make a purchase from us: one will not be satisfied with the location of the store, another - reviews, the third simply does not have enough financial resources. As a result, only a small part will get to us (let's say 300 people). With the arrival of visitors to the store, the sales funnel does not close: you need to direct them to action and turn them into buyers. At this stage, some may not be satisfied with the cost of the product / service, others may not find the desired product, others may not like the service, and only a certain part of the visitors will make a purchase from us (90 people).

We see that at each stage there is a screening out of customers who, for a number of reasons, are not satisfied with some factor, and only 9% of those who have a need for our goods / services make a purchase (in this particular example).

Therefore, the first circles of the funnel are usually much wider than the last circles, and this is usually what the sales funnel looks like.

Why do you need a sales funnel?

A funnel is an ideal tool for analyzing the effectiveness of the entire sales process: from the first stage to the last. It allows you to determine at what stages the loss of potential customers occurs most of all, identify its causes, draw conclusions about the quality of management and the need to intensify efforts at any stage of the sale. A clear understanding of the funnel helps not only to find out the reasons for the failure after the fact, but to predict potential losses and prevent them.

What stages does a sales funnel include and how to build your own?

It is important to note that there is no universal funnel template for everyone: each business is specific depending on the size, field of activity, communication channels, sales process, etc. In one case, this is an online store with different advertising channels leading to a site where the chain of interaction with the consumer is quite long (for example, viewing ads- click and go to website- catalog browsing- adding a product to the cart- registration- ordering- payment). In the other, it is a local beauty salon without any communication channels, where the chain is shorter: salon awareness- visit/use of services- payment.

How to build your own funnel? You only need 1 step: imagine the consumer journey, break down the business into stages (based on the communication channels used) and choose the most measurable ones. The path starts from the very first stages: awareness of the need, awareness, demand, etc. - and ends with a purchase or re-purchase.

What metrics need to be measured?

Sales funnel metrics can be divided into 2 categories: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative indicators. Of course, the first step is to analyze the quantitative data of the sales funnel, that is, calculate the conversion from one stage to another.

Conversion = Number of consumers who moved to the next stage of the funnel / Number of consumers of the previous stage of the funnel * 100%

This allows you to find out what percentage of potential customers moved from the previous stage to the next one (for example, they knew about the store and visited the store), identify problem points and work on them.

Qualitative indicators. Many people make the mistake of forgetting that in addition to quantitative data, there is also qualitative data and they are much more important. It is qualitative indicators that allow us to find out the reasons for the loss of customers. It is clear that the more people who need our products and the more people know about us, the more customers will visit the store and the more sales will be. But this is in theory, but in practice it often happens that you spend several months on advertising to attract visitors to the store, and sales assistants do not serve them efficiently, where most of them are eliminated.

It is necessary to develop criteria for analyzing the qualitative component (website convenience, order filling forms, quality of service, etc.) and constantly analyze each stage in order to improve the quality component of the entire funnel.

For example (see funnel), knowing that only 0.48% of those who know about your store makes a purchase, you can take 2 courses of action.

1. Infinitely increase the budget of advertising channels towards increasing awareness in order to attract 0.48% of those who know about your product.
2. Work on the quality indicators of each stage in order to attract more buyers with the same advertising budget.

Therefore, it is important to remember that quantitative indicators are the same for you and for competitors and have a “ceiling”, and working on quality is a unique opportunity to get ahead. The reward for this is the choice of the best customers, the best employees and, as a result, an even greater gap from the competition.

“Focus on numbers without a clear understanding of their relationship to end result“It’s like going to a good restaurant for dinner and ordering a kilo of food.”

© Ilya Groshikov

How to measure indicators?

When carrying out activities offline counting conversions becomes difficult, but you can track the number of visitors by asking (for example, where they came from), or by providing coupons (booklets that give a discount if the visitor indicates where he came from), QR codes, etc.

When it comes to the Internet, then consider an example of a typical funnel to determine the calculation methods:

As a rule, the sales funnel for promoting a business on the Internet looks like this. Below we will analyze how each indicator is calculated.

• After forecasting the coverage and identifying the number of impressions ("Y.Direct", Google Adwords, other forecasting and calculation tools) correctly configured end-to-end analytics allows you to calculate the effectiveness: Yandex.Metrics, Google analytics, Carrotquest, etc. tools. They help determine how many visitors came to your site (and what age, gender, from which country/region), how many of them remained on it, and how many left right away, for what requests they found you, which stage is a failure and where visitors are most eliminated. Qualitative indicators of the same stage can be calculated using the "Webvisor", "Click Maps" and understand what exactly is the difficulty for visitors.

Website clicks/Effective impressions * 100% = “Effective impressions to clicks” conversion rate

• To determine the number of target transitions, you can set goals in the same tools: click on the “learn more” button, view 5 pages of the site, visit a specific page, etc.

Targeted clicks/ Clicks to site * 100% = Conversion rate “from clicks to targeted clicks”

• The above tools are quite sufficient for calculating applications. However, if we are talking about calls, then it is better to use “Call-tracking” tools to track them, which provide information on how many visitors called you, from what source - up to keyword, what percentage of calls were targeted / non-targeted, etc. This information helps to redistribute the advertising budget towards the most effective channels.

Calls, Leads/Targets * 100% = Conversion Rate “From Targeted Leads to Calls/Targets”

• Call-tracking is also useful for next stage funnels: to track the performance of the sales department (how calls are handled). Tools allow you to determine the response time, quality of service, reasons for abandoning a purchase, etc.

Deal/ Calls, requests * 100% = Conversion rate "from calls to purchase"

• If the customer funnel does not end there (and again there is a stage of visiting an offline store), then here you can use QR codes, promotional codes or coupons on the site to track the number of customers who came from the site (this was discussed above).

As noted, it is important to monitor the quality components of each stage.

It is important to remember that the sales funnel is one of the main predictive tools in business. After receiving all the necessary data, it helps to constantly increase the conversion rate of each stage and differentiate from competitors at each stage. Conscious use of opportunities this tool will allow you to take your business to a new level in a short time.

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