How most businesses build sales funnels
Tanel Vetik
Head of strategy
This might be a shocker for you, but most businesses don’t have a sales funnel in place. They just have some salespeople, a bunch of leads, and everyone does their own thing to turn those leads into clients. They also measure some of this, but the data is all scrambled and people sort of start looking out of the window when someone mentions CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) data cleanup.
And it’s not the data people and marketing team that have to deal with this. The sales team are absolutely overwhelmed by the mess they must deal with every day. Tracking the deal stage is horrendously confusing because nobody really knows how many emails the lead has received, what has been talked about, what sort of pushback there has been, and what the leads think about their experience so far.
It’s also likely that the sales team are missing most of their follow-up deadlines, with some leads being cold for weeks with little to no communication. All the while the marketing department is blamed for delivering poor quality leads – they work their tails off, while the sales team is running around with their hair on fire. Nobody is held responsible, and people just get told to get more money through the door.
How most businesses build sales funnels
Tanel Vetik
Head of strategy
This might be a shocker for you, but most businesses don’t have a sales funnel in place. They just have some salespeople, a bunch of leads, and everyone does their own thing to turn those leads into clients. They also measure some of this, but the data is all scrambled and people sort of start looking out of the window when someone mentions CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) data cleanup.
And it’s not the data people and marketing team that have to deal with this. The sales team are absolutely overwhelmed by the mess they must deal with every day. Tracking the deal stage is horrendously confusing because nobody really knows how many emails the lead has received, what has been talked about, what sort of pushback there has been, and what the leads think about their experience so far.
It’s also likely that the sales team are missing most of their follow-up deadlines, with some leads being cold for weeks with little to no communication. All the while the marketing department is blamed for delivering poor quality leads – they work their tails off, while the sales team is running around with their hair on fire. Nobody is held responsible, and people just get told to get more money through the door.
This might be a shocker for you, but most businesses don’t have a sales funnel in place. They just have some salespeople, a bunch of leads, and everyone does their own thing to turn those leads into clients. They also measure some of this, but the data is all scrambled and people sort of start looking out of the window when someone mentions CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) data cleanup.
And it’s not the data people and marketing team that have to deal with this. The sales team are absolutely overwhelmed by the mess they must deal with every day. Tracking the deal stage is horrendously confusing because nobody really knows how many emails the lead has received, what has been talked about, what sort of pushback there has been, and what the leads think about their experience so far.
It’s also likely that the sales team are missing most of their follow-up deadlines, with some leads being cold for weeks with little to no communication. All the while the marketing department is blamed for delivering poor quality leads – they work their tails off, while the sales team is running around with their hair on fire. Nobody is held responsible, and people just get told to get more money through the door.
Time kills all deals
It’s no wonder the average business closes only 10% interested prospects they get (at best). Why is it that when someone reaches out to the company, asking to do business, they change their mind a week or two down the line? It’s because their experience sucks.
And this is not because your business is bad or necessarily because Tommy the salesman is always grumpy, but because you don’t have the systems in place to support the current size of your business. Most sales revenue is being lost on activities that could be done in 5 minutes or at least on the same day. That’s a fact.
Not having the transparency in your sales flow to clearly say where leads drop off and who should be replaced is costing your business lots and lots of money. Your business is like a motor that constantly leaks oil. Imagine how much energy you would save if you didn’t have to constantly worry about the sales and marketing you do in your business?
What we see other businesses do all the time
I’d say by far the most common setup we see is a business with multiple salespeople all doing their own thing. Leads get handed over and everyone just sort of huddles into their own corner. There’s very little standardisation to the workflow, where some people perform poorly and a select few outperform others by a mile.
It’s almost impossible to say what works well, is marketing leading to sales, why the top performers are so successful, and why some salespeople just fail to close the deals. The average closing rate can fluctuate from 0-50%. Ideally, you’d want something predictable, right?
Well, easier said than done. Let’s look at what you can do and how you can start moving things in the right direction.
What can you do today to fix your sales funnel
The lowest hanging fruit here would be your CRM system. It’s likely the case that you’re not making use of its full potential. You may not be using the automations available because it takes too long to learn and implement. Start by writing down what KPI (Key Performance Indicator) data you need to have in front of your eyes to start making the right decisions: could be average deal value, time since last communication, average deal value, business demographics, etc.
Once you have these written down, you should add a few notes on activities that must be taken to reach the optimal number for all these KPI’s. Next, look at which steps could potentially be automated. Automations don’t sleep, they don’t take sick days, and they always stick to the deadline.
You should be looking to automate as much as possible but do keep in mind that all communication with your leads should be as personalised as possible. The more relevant you can make it, the higher your conversion rates will be.
This process will also create a high level of transparency where you can clearly see who in your sales team pulls their weight, and who’s slacking off. It also opens the door for lead scoring to be able to differentiate between great leads and low value prospects. This is valuable because you can start giving more attention to high profit margin deals, remove inefficiencies in the sales funnel, and start improving the model for higher growth targets.
Another thing you can then start doing is looking at where marketing can offer additional support. For example, when a deal is lost due to wrong timing or because they don’t have enough budget, you can send them back to marketing for them to keep in touch. The lead keeps getting value from your business and will come back to do business once ready.