Sales Funnel Management 101: 9 Tips for Professional Services
Imagine being a teen again.
You just bought your first car.
By saving up some hard-earned cash from your part-time job, you’re now sitting high and mighty.
However, 6 months later, the transmission goes out.
Why?
Because nobody told you the importance of managing your vehicle. You never checked your engine fluids or got an oil change.
Just like with a car, you need to manage your sales funnel.
Although much of a sales funnel is automated, you can’t just forget about it. It needs to be looked after. Taken care of.
Otherwise, it’ll become outdated and useless.
Today, you’ll read about 9 sales funnel management tips for your professional services firm.
With effective sales funnel management, you’ll:
- Identify the areas of your marketing mix that need to be seriously reworked.
- Prevent your leads and existing clients from turning their backs on you.
- Benefit from having an organized compilation of strategies to increase revenue.
Not ready to tow your sales funnel to the junkyard quite yet? Let’s start off with the first tip for sales funnel management to turn that clunker into a hot rod…
Sales Funnel Management Tip #1: Have a Sales-Qualified Lead “Turning Point” in Place
With only so much time in the day, you should really just focus on your most promising leads.
Because you don’t want to reach out to prospects that will just waste your time.
For this, you need to have some kind of sales lead-qualification system in place.
For example, maybe you use lead scoring.
And it could be something like:
- Lead downloads a lead magnet = 4 points
- Lead reads your newsletter = 3 points
- Lead reads another newsletter = another 3 points
- Lead visits your product/pricing page = 6 points
So you get the idea. At some point, this lead has shown enough engagement and interest in your service to be worth pursuing. Maybe at 20 points, you send an email for a consultation or a demo.
The idea is, you identify leads that are just begging for you to reach out to them. That way, you don’t waste your resources on a dead end.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #2: Always Be Tracking Results
The only way to make informed decisions about your sales funnel is by digging into the data.
By tracking your key performance indicators (KPIs), you can identify weak points in your funnel that need to be addressed as well as strong points that can be repeated in the future.
Some of this data may include:
- Conversion rates
- Cost per acquisition
- Website traffic
- Average session time
- Bounce rate
It’s also important to know how well each funnel element is performing.
For example, how good are your lead magnets at acquiring paying clients?
What about your social media paid ads?
Although tracking results is crucial in sales funnel management, it’s nothing without applying the insights in order to improve things.
And by tracking the effectiveness of each sales funnel element, you’ll identify bottlenecks. From there, you know where to start making improvements.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #3: Use Retargeting Ads
According to The Drum, 92% of first-time website visitors don’t buy anything.
However, retargeting ads can win them back.
Honestly, retargeting is like sales funnel management 101.
Here at AutoGrow, we use retargeting ads for all of our clients, regardless of industry.
Besides, they generate 10 times more conversions than regular ads, as noted by Wishpond.
All you have to do is remind the prospective customer what they will get and why your content or product is worth their time.
For example, real estate agency Galles Properties used dynamic retargeting Facebook ads to increase conversions by 455%.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #4: Monitor How Your Email List Is Growing
When you focus on the growth of your email list, every other part of your sales funnel will fall in place.
Email allows you to keep your brand top of mind.
It shows you’re a trustworthy source of information.
As found by Litmus, 78% of marketers say email is important to company success.
You know why?
Because it serves as a channel to deliver personalized messages — something that 71% of consumers expect, according to McKinsey & Company.
But you have to accumulate an email list in the first place. And the best way to do that is by giving them an incentive.
A blog (and weekly newsletter) is one tried-and-true type of content that generates leads.
Besides that, you can use the following gated content:
- Ebooks
- Templates
- Guides
- White papers
- Webinars
- Cheat sheets
- Training courses
Sales Funnel Management Tip #5: Carry Out Split Tests
When the military tests their ballistic missiles in the middle of the desert or out on the ocean, they do so because they don’t want to take the chance of miscalculation.
Well, your sales funnel is like a bomb that could go off at any moment.
But if you test out new implementations (and you should be always doing this), then you’ll prevent a symbolic explosion.
You see, if there’s an underlying issue with your new idea, you’ll catch it before it inflicts any harm.
For example, maybe you can test out the subject line for your email. Additionally, you could test the design and visuals of your email.
Or on your website, maybe you experiment with your CTA buttons. Sometimes, it’s as simple as using more reassuring words to make your CTA more prominent.
Remember, you’ve got a unique audience.
And by testing their tastes, you’ll always be one step ahead.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #6: Leverage the Beauty of a CRM
Sales funnel management becomes much easier with the right customer relationship management platform (CRM).
With it, you can deliver on anything from customer service to sales forecasting.
You see, as your client base grows, marketing and sales become more complex. And it becomes tougher to integrate the two.
But a CRM can organize that data for you.
And it allows you to deliver more tailored messages to your contacts based on their behaviors and tastes.
Plus, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting to follow up with a lead again since most CRMs come with a reminder feature.
Alabama-based company Iron Tribe Fitness was able to triple its revenue and expand to over 60 locations by using Keap’s CRM platform for sales funnel management.
What they did was focus on the following features:
- Sign-up forms
- Geo-targeting
- Sales script templates
- Personalized email drips
What this case study goes to show is that a CRM streamlines the sales funnel management process.
Everything (or mostly everything) is on one central hub for you.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #7: Focus on Retention
Selling to your existing clients is a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to acquire new ones.
In fact, research from Invesp indicates that client acquisition is 5 times more expensive than client retention.
Yet only 18% of firms focus on retention.
You see, successful sales funnel management isn’t just about generating leads and new sales but keeping clients invested in your brand.
And the best ways to keep clients onboard and coming back for more is through regular email follow-ups or retargeting them with ads.
What you’re trying to do here is just show your clients how much you care about them.
Now, in order to show your clients you care about them, consider doing the following with your emails and retargeting ads:
- Create personalized offers
- Show them how much you appreciate them or thank them
- Deliver an outstanding customer experience
- Share valuable thought leadership content
- Invite them to join a VIP group or to receive exclusive deals
- Ask clients about their concerns and address them
Sales Funnel Management Tip #8: Reduce Friction Where You Can
Okay, so no sales funnel is going to be 100% friction-free.
But you can come pretty darn close.
For example, you could add some security guarantees in your opt-in form.
Or perhaps, you could reduce the number of required form fields to be completed if you’re not generating enough conversions.
Actually, shortening form field length has been shown to increase conversions by as much as 120%, as we found in our Sales Conversion Pack case studies.
Really, there’s a lot of possible culprits for friction for your services sales funnel.
Maybe a buyer visits your website and doesn’t see any social proof, such as testimonials and client success stories.
At AutoGrow, we sprinkle testimonials all over our homepage to reassure prospects that we can deliver the goods. And we’re also currently working on some client case studies too.
Some other points of friction your buyers may experience are:
- Lack of pricing information
- Poor website user experience
- No transparency on benefits and features
- Slow time to reach out to them
Identifying points of friction is one of the most critical aspects of sales funnel management.
Because if you can address these factors head on, you’re one step closer to closing more deals.
Sales Funnel Management Tip #9: Implement an Effective Follow-Up Strategy
“Nice guys finish last.”
Some swear this saying simply isn’t true. “No way,” they say.
Although in some cases, it may be true; in sales it definitely is the truth.
Of course, you want to show kindness and respect during sales calls.
But deep down, you need to be aggressive and refuse to take no for an answer.
Research from Brevet suggests that 80% of sales closings require 5 follow-ups.
So when you don’t think a quality lead is interested after a consultation or an assessment, don’t just roll over.
Instead, you should create a robust strategy for following up with them.
For best practice, set up a schedule for how you’ll reach out to your leads.
And be sure to segment your audience for more personalized messaging. Because if you know your prospect’s demographic, firmographic, or behavioral data, you’re in a better position to follow up with them in a unique way that resonates with them.
When you’re managing your sales funnel follow-ups, make sure that a drip email sequence is a cornerstone of your strategy.
To illustrate, check out our automated post-webinar email drip…
Keep in mind, I’m just screenshotting the opening paragraphs.
Email 1
Email 2
Email 3
ON24 finds that, on average, 45% of webinar registrants don’t end up attending.
You see, people registered for our webinar for a reason. Clearly, they’ve shown an interest in our brand.
But at the same time, we get that people are busy and they’ll inevitably miss our webinar.
So by following up with them consistently, we can re-engage with our leads — allowing us to convert more of them into clients.
Conclusion
In today’s reading, we took a look at 9 tips for managing your sales funnel.
There’s a lot of moving parts to a sales funnel.
If you fail to keep a close eye on it, it’s just bound to fail.
Because the truth is, there’s no such thing as the perfect sales funnel. You need to be in a perpetual mindset of improving upon it.
What you learned today is that everything from your copywriting to your tech stack needs to be carefully chosen with an evidence-based approach.
And if you don’t think you have the evidence, or data, to make an informed decision, then you need to test, test, and test again.
Over time, you’ll get a firm grip on what your audience prefers when it comes to interacting with all your buyer’s journey touchpoints.
With that, I hope you learned something new.
And if you did, please let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
