Sales Funnel – See how to identify the best opportunities

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To identify the best sales opportunities, it is essential to first understand the difference between a Sales Funnel and a Marketing Funnel.

You can find different names for the marketing funnel on the internet, but it is basically divided into 5 stages: attract, convert, relate, sell and analyze. To achieve this, actions and strategies are developed, including content marketing, which contributes to capturing and qualifying leads. The sales funnel is also known as the sales process. Below, we will highlight each of the stages and how each tool can optimize this process to help identify the best opportunities.

In other words, the Marketing Funnel maps and tracks the consumer's purchasing journey and identifies strategies that will become triggers for the exact moment when the customer will be ready to buy. This is where the Sales Funnel comes in. When the person has already decided to buy, but still needs a little "push". In short, it's more or less like this!

Sales Funnel Stages
Carrying out this integrated management between marketing whatsapp mobile number database free download sales makes actions more assertive and conversions result in sales. Before we enter the sales funnel phase, it is important to remember that after-sales is part of the last stage of the Marketing Funnel, known as “analyze”.

The Sales Funnel has become a simple method for chronologically designing the sales process, from prospecting management to closing the sale. It is worth remembering that each business has its own particularities. This means that the sales funnel is not standard. What makes sense for one company may not make sense for another. In other words, each company needs to understand its processes well and create its own stages.

Check out 6 steps of a very common sales funnel on the market:

1. Prospect Qualified Leads
Prospecting for leads can be done through various channels, through the social networks that your persona uses most, through paid media , using Landing Pages , also known as “conversion pages”, email marketing, broadcast lists via WhatsApp, email flows divided into different bases, which are segmented through automation software, among other tools.

This moment is extremely important because you will contextualize the solution that your business offers, enabling the execution of assertive actions, in a personalized contact.

To do this, your Sales Funnel must be “clean and organized”. RD Station has great tools to help you stay focused on the right opportunities and put the first paragraph of this topic into practice.

2. Connection and Qualification
At this stage, you already have a segmented lead base, right? It's time to research and identify which leads are ready to buy. Research data shows that 5 to 7% of a company's potential customers are ready to buy, while the other 93 to 95% are in other stages of the buying journey, meaning many still don't know they need the solution or don't even know about your company.

If you still don’t use CRM – Customer Relationship Management, you’re wasting time. And time is money! But if you use CRM and have opportunities that are sitting idle and not interacting with you, you may be missing out on great opportunities to close sales; especially if these opportunities have been “forgotten for a long time”.

Maybe this is the time to “give up” on something that really doesn’t have the “ideal fit” for your business; that is, it doesn’t have the profile for your company’s average ticket or some other parameter that you establish. But, even so, the loss is something that can be recovered. And still, maybe now is not the time to invest energy and time. With that, you dedicate yourself to recovering leads that you did this same process a while ago; in addition to the new ones that entered the prospecting base.

CRM is a great tool for qualifying leads. It allows you to keep track of all the notes and discussions that were made.

3. Needs Assessment
At this stage, after establishing a connection with the lead, it is time to understand the prospect's scenario. Gather information by asking questions to better understand the company's reality. A very common mistake in sales is trying to sell without listening to the customer. In other words, presenting a solution without identifying the customer's focus. A conversation with good questions to identify the company's current situation and the desired situation, in addition to the emotional reason for the purchase, are fundamental steps for a successful sale. An interesting questioning model is:

What is the current situation of the company?
What is the desired situation? Where do they want to be?
What prevents you from reaching this situation? (Discovering Barriers)
Why is it important for you to achieve this result? (With this question you often identify the Emotional Reason for the Purchase)
We ask questions and listen carefully to discover interests, purchasing criteria and other considerations. By gathering this information, the client helps us propose unique solutions .

4. Present the Proposal
For the proposal presentation stage, whether through face-to-face or virtual contact, make the most of technology. Videos showing how your product works. Graphs with results and testimonials that show your customers' satisfaction are great indicators that narrow the proposal presentation to closing the sale.

Research your customer, because they are the focus. So before presenting your solution, show that you know all the bottlenecks and identify what is a priority for the customer to solve and then present the solution.

5. Negotiate the Proposal
Negotiation is a moment that requires more intellectual skill and knowledge of the client's business and its solution than anything else. What we present and how we present it is essential in the buying and selling process.

In other words, the variable here is very large and will depend on the type of business and area of ​​activity. For example, a company that sells machinery for industry may negotiate an extended warranty. A communications agency may negotiate consulting or a diagnosis. A service provider may offer a discount on a more advanced plan. A business that is launching a product that allows for experimentation may use this at the time of negotiation. In short, negotiating, even in a systematic way, is an art that requires the creativity of the human mind.

6. Close the Sale
Humanization is still the key to the success of any business. Know how to delight your customer when closing the sale. Fulfill all agreements at every stage and surprise by delivering something of value that will remain engraved in your customer's memory at that moment.

Ultimately, to identify the best sales opportunities, it is essential to keep your funnel organized. In addition, using tools and resources that improve the visibility of customer history will certainly contribute significantly as well. Click here to find other tools that will certainly help you increase your digital presence and consequently your sales!

Organize your sales funnel – Quick tips
Have CRM software – this is the 21st century, don’t try to do it in an Excel spreadsheet!
Draw your customer's journey chronologically, this will help you understand your sales process.
Invest in training your sales team, so they will approach opportunities in the base more assertively, knowing the history of customer interactions with the company, even if they are new to the team.
To have a qualified base, it is essential to have the ICP and Persona profile well defined!
Make the most of the reports your CRM provides. They help you understand your customer's behavior and many other factors, such as: average ticket, sales cycle, common questions and reasons for losses.
Basic tools to organize and identify the best opportunities – CRM, email automation software, Landing Pages, Interaction Applications with automation and reporting, among others.