Today's going to fun!
I'm going to show you exactly how we used a sales funnel to generate over a million dollars in revenue for our software company Revukangaroo.
So...
What is a sales funnel?
Sales funnels seem to be the hottest new phrase crossing the internet. A lot of popularity credit can be given to Russell Brunson, who is named the kind of Funnels.
A sales funnel is a process in which you take your customer down a journey of steps to lead them to the final action you want them to take, ultimately the sale!
Hubspot defines a sales funnel as:
A sales funnel is a metaphor for a traditional sales process from beginning to end.
On a macro-level, a sales funnel will start with a large number of potential buyers at the top Based on certain criteria, this pool of potential buyers is reduced to a fewer number of prospects.
How Do I Build A Sales Funnel?
Anytime I'm looking to build any sales funnel I break it down to 3 easy steps:
- Idea or Product
- Sales Process aka "The Game Plan"
- Execution aka "Massive Action"
Step 1:
We had spent nearly ten months in a dark office, creating our tool. So taking this from idea to the product wasn't an overnight thing. In many cases, you can create a sales funnel in a short amount of time.
Make sure you are clear about the concept that you have. You can test your idea with friends, your email list, current customers, or your Facebook group.
We developed our software based on solving a problem that many of our customers had, gathering online reviews.
Step 2:
Create a clear sales process, map out your entire game plan on paper. Or if you're like me, you'll prefer a giant whiteboard to doodle on.
We had to make sure we had a way to sell the system. We had to think of all the steps a buyer would take from start to finish in the buying process.
We had to consider how we were going to market to them and what would happen when they landed on a page. What was the buying experience like, did we send them emails? If so, how?
Where did the transaction take place? How would we know which subscription clients had?
So, we wanted to automate a lot of this and make sure our clients shared the same experience each time.
We started making a list of tools that we knew would solve this problem. Lucky for us Innvio had been around a lot longer and already had some of these tools in place.
Sales Funnels Tools
Where it comes to building out your sales funnel toolkit, there several competitors in the space. I'll list here what I believe are the best in the market.
When it comes to the sales process, you will want to automate communication with your prospect.
In our case, we had to think of the process when we got someone to become a lead what did we want to happen next, how did we want that to happen at all?
In this situation, we figured we would take two approaches that required two different tools.
- We wanted our leads from ads to opt-in to a forum and go through a series of emails starting the sales cycle. We built multiple sophisticated email campaigns using Infusionsoft, which is a powerful marketing automation tool.
- From there, we wanted to leverage the power of SMS communication and used an add on tool to Infusionsoft called Plus This.
In order to get these tools to trigger, we first had to get them to a landing page.
There are many sales funnel software platforms around, too many to name in this post. I favor one over the others because of simplicity and functionality.
Clickfunnels
Clickfunnels.com is a sales funnel building software that allows almost any user who can drag and drop elements to create a functioning funnel.
For beginners, it's one of the better all in one option on the market. It not only functions as a sales funnel builder but also allows you to do email automation.
Again, let me state this is good for beginners. There are some setbacks when it comes to email deliverability because of the service provider they use, but ultimately it will get the job done.
How Much Does Clickfunnels Cost?
I'm glad you ask! Priced at $97 a month for its base subscription, I consider it a good buy. The $297 a month subscription allows you to leverage the email automation I mentioned and allows you unlimited funnels to build in your account. (Here is a promo link to a 14-Day Free Trial)
Here is one of the bonuses Clickfunnels offers over many of the other funnel building software; it comes with series of educational videos called Funnelflix to help you understand the art of online sales and digital marketing.
Adding a video education series is one of the strategies we adopted in our software company. We took the page right out of Clickfunnels.
Adding an education platform around the best uses of our tool helped us increase sales by another six figures a year. It also provided a better anchor to the software.
So now that we had unpacked our software stack (toolkit), it was time stage 3 implementation.
Step 3.
Execution of an idea is always one of the most enjoyable parts of building a sales funnel. You get to see your creation come alive right in front of you.
We started out by jumping into Clickfunnels.com and using one of their pre-made templates and quickly realized we needed to build our own to match the quality style we want.
(Note: Clickfunnels has developed much more aesthetically pleasing funnels over the past couple of years.)
[DOWNLOAD]: FREE SALES FUNNEL TEMPLATES
Once we had a design, we wanted to connect our Infusionsoft account to the landing page, allowing any new contact to be sent a series of emails from the automation campaign.
Once inside that campaign, they were also sent a text message encouraging them to view a video from our education series.
With a little fancy marketing automation, an invite was sent asking them to book a time on our sales team's calendar. If they didn't, our sales team would reach out to them a week later, asking what they thought of the resources we sent them.
With a few tweaks, some additional traffic sources, and sales conversion, we were able to break the seven-figure mark. We even received an award from Clickfunnels (Two Comma Club Award) that signifies you are have earned seven figures using their software.
Conclusion
If you're going to sell to anyone, you need to build a sales funnel so your customers have a predictable journey.
Yes, it takes a little work, but if you follow those three simple steps and you'll be able to create your sales funnel in no time.
Let me know what industry you are in. We may have a sales funnel already pre-built that we can send you. Just go here to sign up for a 14-Day free trial for Clickfunnels, and we can drop it in your account.
