Sales funnels are a popular strategy used by large corporations to increase sales.
In the article “What is a sales funnel and how does it help me get new customers,” we discussed what a sales funnel is and how it relates to how information is presented to the public, with each part of the funnel representing a stage in which the person progresses from being a reader to becoming a customer.
We discussed the first two stages of the Sales Funnel (awareness and curiosity) and stated that the visitor is someone who comes to our page out of curiosity or is drawn to one of our publications.
When the persons enter the sales funnel, they will either develop an interest in our product or service or not. The information we provide will lead to a closer relationship, trust in us, and a position as an authority in the field of interest.
The person is not yet a customer; we must still go through the remaining stages, each in its own time; the three stages we will study today are prospect, action, and loyalty. Let’s take a look at each of them individually.
The 5 stages of the Sales Funnel
As previously stated, the sales funnel has five stages, each of which businesses must be aware of in order to increase sales and maintain customer loyalty. As we gain a better understanding of each stage, we will be able to better understand our ideal client’s behavior and assist him in acquiring the good or service that he seeks and that we provide.
Prospect
We concluded the previous stage by stating that we must be able to separate the leads who are truly interested in our product or service; this is what we do in this stage; we begin segmenting them based on the responses we have received thus far.
These leads are those with whom we have the potential to do business. You should already know who your buyer persona, or ideal customer, is (to learn more about this, we recommend you read our article ” Discover the method helping all businesses develop their buyer persona“).
As you are already familiar with the characteristics of this buyer persona, begin comparing the responses your leads have given you so far via the form, as well as the interactions you have had with them via email.
Once this evaluation is complete, your sales department should contact them to ensure that they fit the profile you’ve established as an ideal customer.
Action
We’ve already analyzed all of the lead information and segmented it based on the likelihood of a positive response. The next step is to present our product or service offered to the qualified lead.
If all of the information we have about the lead is well-supported and analyzed, we have a good chance of closing the deal. Based on the information we have about the classified lead or prospect; the sales team will make a proposal; we already know how to approach him and are aware of his interests and needs.
Because we already have a relationship of trust and authority with the lead, he will be willing to listen to our approach and buy our product or service without feeling like we are invading his privacy.
Loyalty
This is the process’s conclusion; the potential customer becomes a customer. He decides to buy the good or service that we have offered him and that meets his needs, and he is pleased with his purchase from us.
But it is not the end of the process; while all of our efforts to date have been directed toward converting a visitor into a buyer, the process has not concluded.
We must seek customer loyalty after we have sold. We can accomplish this through post-sale actions such as conducting a customer satisfaction survey, for example.
Suppose customers feel that they have received what they expected, that they have been treated with dignity, and that they can continue to trust your product. In that case, they will buy it again and even recommend it to others, which will increase your sales and the value of your brand.
But we cannot let the buyer down; we have to fulfill our promise to give them the product or service they expected, doing business with integrity, as we saw in our article “How to gain new clients by doing business having integrity“.
As we mentioned before, it is necessary to know the opinion of the public about our service, for this, we must contact them in some way to get their opinion and know if they have any complaints or suggestions. If we do this, buyers will feel that we take them into account and that their opinion is valuable to us.
