Aaron Hoos

It’s the end of July. Time to fill out your Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up. (Just because it’s the summer, doesn’t mean you should take time off from your sales funnel).

Wondering what the heck a Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up is? Read the first Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up blog post that kicked it all off!

Every entrepreneur wants to grow their business and they drink from the deep well of marketing and sales advice to help them. But let’s get one thing clear: All of those marketing- and sales-related tips and ideas and techniques and tricks can contribute to business growth, but there are really only 3 ways that your business can actually grow.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Replicate your sales funnel: This can be achieved by (1) hiring employees and managing them, (2) franchising your business, or (3) creating an affiliate program. Financial and real estate businesses may find that the first choice (hiring people to help support your practice) is the easiest and clearest option. The other two choices aren’t unheard of in financial and real estate businesses but can be a little more complicated in these highly regulated industries.




• Create passive income: This is achieved by creating products (instead of services) that people can buy and receive without any ongoing effort from you. (An ebook is a classic example of this business model). For some ways to help figure out how to turn your active, time-intensive business into a passive one, check out How to be a lazy serial entrepreneur (part 1) and How to be a lazy serial entrepreneur (part 2).




• Increase some aspect of the purchase: This can be achieved by increasing (1) the number of customers who buy from you at any given time, (2) how much volume you sell per customer, or (3) how much money you earn from each customer. These options are pretty straightforward to implement but their true success can be limited by some factors (such as the amount of time you have in a day to spend with each customer). For ideas on achieving all three methods of increasing some aspect of the purchase, check out this blog post on how to find the best customers in your sales funnel and earn more profit from them.

So, which should you choose? There’s no reason why you can’t select all three options and continually work at implementing them all, over time. But it also depends on who you are and how you like to operate. Each of these options requires something different from you. The first option — replicating your sales funnel — requires some administrative and management skill. The second option — passive income — can be quite profitable but requires a (sometimes considerable) up-front investment of time and money. The third option — increasing some aspect of the purchase — is probably the easiest and fastest to implement but its effects can be dampened by the time you have and whatever the market can bear.

Start by working on whichever option is easiest for you to implement based on who you are and what strengths you have. Then build off of those wins and select another option to grow some more.

Over the next few days, I’ll blog about some additional ideas and tips to help you work through each of these three options.

I received this excellent sales funnel question from a blog reader a couple of weeks ago. I’m posting the question and answer (slightly edited) here because I think it’s a question and answer that every business owner can benefit from knowing. Thanks again for the question!

The Question:
How do you determine if you have enough opportunities in your sales funnel to hit your fiscal year goal?

Aaron’s Answer:
If you know what your average conversion rate is, and if you know what your average per-customer spend is, you should be able to calculate your answer easily.

• Your average conversion rate is the number of Prospects in your sales funnel compared to the number of those Prospects who actually become Customers. For example, if you have 1000 Prospects and 100 of them become Customers, then your conversion rate is 10%.
• Your average per-customer spend is the amount of money each Customer spends on average in a given period of time (in this case, your fiscal year). For example, if each of those 100 customers (from the above example) spend a varying amount of money but it averages out to $1000 per Customer in a fiscal year, then your average per-customer spend is $1000.

Here’s what you do next:

Using the above numbers, along with your fiscal year financial target, you are going to do some simple math in order to know how many people need to be in your sales funnel (as Prospects) in order to reach your financial goals.

First, divide your fiscal year financial target by your average per-customer spend to find out how many Customers you need. (For example, if you need to make $100,000 per year and each Customer pays you $1000 in a fiscal year, you know that you need 100 Customers).

Then, divide the number of Customers you need (which you just identified in the above step) by your conversion rate to find out how many Prospects you need. (For example, if your conversion rate is 10%, then 100 Customers divided by a 10% conversion rate is 1000 people needed in your sales funnel).

That’s it! In the example above, if you want to earn $100,000, and each Customer pays $1000, then you need 100 Customers. In order to get 100 Customers, you need to have 1000 Prospects.

If you want to go deeper, you can divide the results you’ve just achieved into smaller goals to get quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals. I think those might be more helpful. And, if you want to grow your business, consider these tips to increase your conversion rate or my popular blog post 99 ways to optimize your sales funnel and grow your business.

Disclaimer: There are other factors to consider: Outside risks (like the economy) can have an impact. So can seasonal fluctuations if you’re measuring in the middle of a fiscal year. Also, your sales funnel’s conversion period can play a role in determining how accurate your numbers are. Every industry is different and these things need to be considered and factored in, even if it’s just as a rule of thumb.

Check out some of my other Aaron’s Answers blog posts. If you have questions you’d like to ask, feel free to email them to me and if I think all of my readers will benefit, I’ll post them here. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your info anonymous.