A sales funnel full of leads does not necessarily mean your business will get more sales conversions. High sales conversions happen when you have a carefully mapped out sales funnel for your leads. It requires sales reps to carefully engage with leads to convert them into customers.

Let's discuss what mapping a sales funnel means and how you can incorporate it in your sales funnel for more efficient conversions.

What Is Mapping a Sales Funnel?

In marketing, a sales funnel is basically the visual representation of the journey a buyer takes from the top to the bottom of the funnel, where they convert by purchasing your product or service. Similarly, mapping a sales funnel means to outline all the steps a lead takes to convert to a customer.

An effective sales funnel will include things like quality content, channel strategy and personalized messaging, which are all customized for every stage of the funnel. These increase conversion rates and bring more sales.

Structure Your Sales Funnel

A sales funnel optimized for ROI will deliver the maximum conversions using minimum resources. Your sales funnel must include quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily quality sales actions throughout each stage of the funnel for effective structuring. You can structure your sales funnel in three parts:

·         Top of the Funnel (TOFu)

TOFu is the awareness and discovery stage for leads and you must deliver quality content here to attract engagement opportunities that lead to future sales. The content should be relevant, provide solutions and address one or more of prospects’ pain points.

·         Middle of the Funnel (MOFu)

MOFu is where your leads evaluate their buying decisions by researching and comparing solutions. They assess everything from pricing, features and additional perks. This is the prime time for you to enlighten them about your solutions and offer them freemiums, demos and trial and provide promotions and deals.

·         Bottom of the Funnel (BOFu)

BOFu is the stage where leads convert into customers by making purchase decisions and following through. Leads will not always convert at this stage and you need to prime your messages to convert them.

Challenges in Mapping a Sales Funnel

Leads often 'leak' from your sales funnels and you need to regularly address these leaks to maintain your sales funnel map. You can mend the leaks and avoid losing leads by:

·         Analyzing customer behavior

Every lead is different, and you should analyze their behavior and plan their actions to increase conversions.

·         Improving your content marketing

As always, content is king and quality content that is relevant to leads can drastically improve sales.

·         Optimizing response times

Timing is key when it comes to leads and you must optimize your response times for each message, from the first to the last.

·         Always be qualifying

Qualification should start from the very beginning. Gather as much information as possible to effectively qualify leads from the very beginning to avoid wasting resources down the funnel.

·         Regularly reverting back to each stage of the funnel

Your sales funnel stages need constant attention and you need to regularly revert back to them and fix 'leaks' as best you can.

Consistently improving these aspects of your sales funnel will efficiently increase your sales.

Conclusion

Mapping a sales funnel can help you efficiently increase your conversion rates and subsequent sales from leads. An overflowing sales funnel is not the best sign of improved sales, it just means you have more leads. Successfully and efficiently converting qualified leads is what is important.

Mapping a sales funnel will increase the efficacy of your conversions and give you the maximum ROI from minimum resources.

For more information on mapping sales funnels and all things sales, visit our website today.