Aaron Hoos

In a previous blog post, I showed you how to draw your sales funnel. I led you through an example and we ended up with a fictional sales funnel that looks like this. (Even though it’s fictional, it’s pretty close to many real businesses… but just simplified a bit).

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to show you how you can examine the sales funnel you’ve drawn to find new opportunities to run a more successful, profitable business.

One of the first things we can ask as we look at our sales funnel is:

What do we do with someone AFTER they become a Customer?

Our example sales funnel doesn’t do anything with these Customers. But customers have already decided that you can solve their problems and they have seen the value you provide them. So you should follow up with your Customers and offer them new products and services.

New products and services might come in the form of…

• Ancillary products and services that are sold at the time of the sale
• Upselling the Customer into bigger and better versions of the products or services they just bought
• Cross-promoting the products and services of complementary service providers using affiliate marketing
• Selling additional products and services in a follow-up sequence

A great place to start is to use the tool I describe I this blog post: Product development, pricing, and sales funnel strategy made easy. It’s a simple way to find new products and services that fit within your existing offering!

To use the example that we’ve been working on: Perhaps the business can offer basic, intermediate, and advanced ebooks instead of just one ebook; or perhaps the business can sell the coaching and offer the ebook plus a workbook for a slight additional cost; or maybe the business owner can turn the ebook into a print book and sell it at the back of the room during the seminar; or maybe if the business owner presents several different seminars on different topics, they can record them and offer them as a package to ebook buyers.

Another thing you can do in your sales funnel is turn your Customers into Evangelists. For the same reasons that they might buy from you again, they might also tell their friends about your business, too. You can make it easier for them by asking them to tell their friends or even by asking for their friend’s contact information. And you can make it even easier for them by incentivizing your customers with kickbacks if their referred friends buy from you.

Stayed tuned. There are many more ways to find new opportunities in your sales funnel.

Understanding your sales funnel and being able to draw it out are essential skills you need to have if you want to grow a profitable business.

In this blog post, I want to walk you step-by-step through drawing out your business’ sales funnel. (Download this Sales Funnel Quick Reference Guide for more information about sales funnels).

STEP ONE: LIST EVERYTHING YOU DO

In two separate lists, list all of your marketing efforts and all of your products and services. Don’t worry if the lists aren’t exhaustive; just try to get it all down into the two lists.

For example:

Let’s say that your marketing efforts include online articles and press releases, Twitter, and you participate in your local Chamber of Commerce. You have a website and you also have a landing page that specifically sells an ebook.

And let’s say that your products and services include an ebook, telephone coaching, and seminars.

As you do this step, you might think: “Oh, but sometimes I talk to people on the phone. And how what about the money transaction? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. You can list it in a third – “where the heck does this go?” list, if you want. Just get the two main lists down first.
 

STEP TWO: ARRANGE IN ORDER

Now it’s time to arrange your marketing efforts in order. It is very likely that people see you in one marketing channel before finding you in another.

For example:

Your target market might first spot you in a Twitter ReTweet so they follow you on Twitter and then they later check out your website. Or, they might do a search on Google for something, find an article you wrote, and then click to your website. So put your marketing efforts in order.

In the example we’ve been doing, it might look like this. You can see we’ve just grouped everything into three basic groups — the initial marketing at the top, your website homepage and landing page in the middle (since people will probably get to that site THROUGH one of the marketing channels at the top of your funnel) and your products/services at the bottom. Nothing fancy. We’re making some assumptions here (and we can always move stuff around later).

STEP THREE: FILL IN THE BLANKS

As you look at your sales funnel, you’ll realize that there are blanks that haven’t been covered yet (and maybe you added them to a “where the heck does this go?” list in step one). Some examples include:

• Add interaction
• Add your paygates (the places where the customer pays you)

For example

In the example we’ve been building, let’s imagine that prospective customers contact you (especially from Chamber of Commerce but occasionally through your website) to learn more about your seminars and coaching. After you interact with them a bit, they sign a contract and pay and you deliver the service.

And let’s also imagine that your paygates (which I’ve indicated in green in the example) are as follows: People pay up-front for your ebook and your coaching and they pay after the fact when you deliver a seminar.

In the example we’ve been doing, it might look like this. Again, it’s just a rough diagram and we’ll tweak it as we go.

STEP FOUR: CONNECT THE DOTS

In this step, you start to draw lines from one part of your sales funnel to another.

Not all of your marketing channels will prompt people to move forward in your sales funnel in the same way. Some will drive people to your website, others will get the phone ringing. Some marketing channels will prompt people in more than one way.

And, let’s not forget that sometimes, people will look at one marketing channel and then another before moving forward in your sales funnel, or they will buy one product and then another farther down your sales funnel. So there isn’t just vertical movement down your sales funnel, there is also horizontal movement as well.

For example:

You might find that your article marketing and some of your press releases tend to point people to your landing pages (instead of your website’ s home page) so you draw lines to connect those appropriately. And you might also realize that your Chamber of Commerce activity rarely results in an ebook sale but usually results in coaching and seminar work. So you connect those.

In the example we’ve been doing, it might look like this. You can see that (in our example) the article marketing TENDS to send people directly to a specific landing page in our website and our networking at the Chamber of Commerce TENDS to have people contacting us directly (instead of visiting the website… although some people from the Chamber will visit our website first).

STEP FIVE: GROUP INTO STAGES

At each stage in your sales funnel, the people in that stage have a different mindset. Some barely know you and are skeptical of what you offer. Others feel that they have a pressing problem and are curious if you can help them.

By grouping your different marketing and sales and delivery efforts into stages, you can communicate more effectively with the people in that stage because you know what mindset they have.

In general, I tend to use 5 stages (Audience, Leads, Prospects, Customers, Evangelists) but you might be more comfortable with a different grouping. That’s fine. The important thing is to define the stages and then figure out what mindset your sales funnel contacts have in that stage.

For example:

I’ve used just four stages in this example – Audience, Leads, Prospects, and Customers. Let’s assume that this fictional company doesn’t do very much with its Evangelists.

First we add the Audience stage by grouping together all of the marketing channels that we meet people who have likely never heard of us before.

Then we add the Lead stage by grouping together all of the channels where people might come to us because they’re interested in learning more.

Then we add the Prospect stage by grouping together all of the channels where people might keep digging because they realize that we can solve a problem they have. You’ll note that we made an adjustment with the Landing Page because it does double-duty as both a place where Leads land and a place that convinces Prospects to buy.

Then we add the Customer stage by grouping together all of our deliverables. You’ll notice that the ebook paygate has been moved because as soon as the Propsect clicks the Buy Now button and enters the paygate to pay, they have become customers. And, if they have contacted the business and are ready to receive a contract, they have become customers.

Now it’s your turn! Give it a try for your business. And in the comments below, tell me what you think of this process. I’ve tried to lay it out as simply as possible but I think about this stuff 24/7. Are there aspects of each step that I’m not covering in-depth? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll write a blog post to give more detail.

When starting up a business, the entrepreneur usually has a couple of monetization options in mind. A consultant might offer one-on-one coaching OR team-participation workshops, for example. In my business, I offer written content for businesses to use in their marketing and sales efforts, plus I sell my content in other ways as well (i.e., books and ebooks).

And as a business grows, it should seek out additional opportunities to make more money. These opportunities should be related to the core business in some way; I don’t mean that a barber shop should start selling used cars. So the consultant I mentioned above might add a book and seminars and some affiliate marketing to their business.

These additional monetization opportunities have two benefits:

• They offer additional ways for existing customers to spend more in the business
• They offer new ways to attract new customers into the business

A LESSON IN CREATIVE MONETIZATION

Recently, while searching for bookstores online, we stumbled across a bookstore in England that we will definitely visit next time we’re in the UK. And this bookstore, in my opinion, has mastered the art of monetization.

When you think of a bookstore, what monetization possibilities do you have in mind? There are the books, obviously, plus a lot of bookstores are adding coffee. Those are the two top-of-mind monetization possibilities.

But Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (which should win an award for awesomest bookstore name ever) rocks in the monetization department.

Along with books (and perhaps food; I couldn’t tell from their site), they offer:

• Two “reading spa” packages where booklovers chat about reading with a member of the staff, they read in a “Bibliotherapy room”, they eat cakes and cookies, they get a bag of treats, and they get a voucher to buy books.
• A year-long reading plan package where you pay some money to the Emporium and they send you books that they think you’ll like.
• They also have an impressive array of literary events that might not be monetized themselves but are a great way to bring customers into the shop.

Non-book-lovers might look at this list and wonder why anyone would ever want to spend money on this stuff. But my wife and I are pretty avid book collectors and we both remarked about how much we would love living near a place like this.

And you don’t have to be a book-lover to admire the creative ways that Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights has branched into creative monetization.

HOW CAN YOU CREATE MORE MONETIZATION OPPORTUNITIES?

When I set up businesses for myself or for my clients, monetization is usually part of the early conversation. And quite often I find myself relying on some of the most common forms of monetization. But there’s a lesson we can learn from Mr. B’s: Get creative about your monetization!

How can you get creative about your monetization? What can you do that will get people experiencing your business in new ways? What are some new and unexpected ways that you can repackage your products and services that would attract new customers or get existing customers to buy more from you?

Here are a couple of places to start:

• Check out my list of 5 levels of content monetization and see if there are opportunities you are missing in your business.
• Use this product development, pricing, and sales funnel tool to help you find additional monetization opportunities to fit into your sales funnel.

I’d like to hear from you: In the comments, why not tell us about the creative monetization ideas have you seen or that you’ve developed in your business…

Long before they buy from you, you are investing time and energy into your leads and prospects to move them through your sales funnel. By the time they convert into customers, you have sunk resources (money/time/effort) into cultivating the relationship.

So companies that struggle with insufficient income or profits might not be moving prospective customers through their sales funnel fast enough. Here are some tips to solve that.

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR SALES FUNNEL CONTACTS

• Increase the urgency in your sales funnel by highlighting some of the reasons that someone shouldn’t delay in buying from you. Rely on the 7 basic human emotions to help you push, pull, and prod your prospective buyer toward an immediate purchase.
• Offer an incentive for customers to buy now instead of later. Consider something like a reduced rate or an added bonus. Make sure that it’s an attractive offering with a lot of value or it won’t work. (You’ll also need to figure out how to respond to people who don’t buy from you but then ask you later for the free stuff anyway. It will happen!)
• Speed up your points of contact. If you have a sales call scheduled with a prospect every two weeks (14 days) until they become customers, why not try scheduling that sales call every 10 or 11 days. By doing this one simple step, you’re speeding up your funnel by 30%!
• At some point in your sales funnel you’ll have satisfied all of the buying parameters that a prospective buyer has (and if they haven’t bought by this time, they are just waiting until the time is right for them). So ask for the sale… every time you talk to them.
• Figure out the steps in each stage of your sales funnel and see if you can’t combine them together. Address two steps instead of one in a particular interaction.
• Objections are awesome! They tell you why someone isn’t buying. Handle objections as quickly as possible in your sales funnel. Don’t wait for the prospective buyer to ask you.
• Ask: Ask your prospective buyer: What is keeping you from buying today? You’ll get unanswered objections, sticking points, and probably a lot of hedging and feet-shuffling. But you’ll also find out what roadblocks you can address to get people moving through your sales funnel faster.

Your sales funnel is an engine that churns out customers (and revenue). Use these tips to put down the accelerator and get your buyers moving.

There are 7 basic human emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Contempt, Joy, Sadness, Surprise.

These are root emotions from which all other emotions spring. (Read more about them here). These 7 emotions are at the core of what drives our decision-making.

If you understand these emotions and build your sales funnel around them, you can sell more.

HOW TO USE JOY IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL

Weirdly, joy is the only fully positive emotion of the 7 emotions. (Surprise could be positive but it could also be negative; the rest are negative emotions).

Joy is easily the most popular emotion that sales funnels sell to. Different sales funnels will call it different things (depending on what you’re selling) but it boils down to joy. Some sales funnels will explicitly call it happiness or peace of mind, and some sales funnels will implicitly sell to joy by selling about some of the things people think positively about — success, wealth, health, etc. So if you are a real estate professional and you are selling a couple on why they should hire you to list their home, you are selling the concept of joy… joy in how quickly you’ll sell their home and how much you’ll get for it. If you are selling in the e-business space, you are also selling the concept of joy… joy in how the person will be able to quit their job and enjoy the freedom that wealth brings.

• You cannot overstate joy. Don’t soft-sell it. Focus on the benefits as much as possible. Get people feeling joy while they read your sales copy.
• You don’t have to use the word “joy”. Just make sure you stir up some happiness with every sentence.
• Push your sales funnel prospect to think further: If you are selling something and you only talk about its successful achievement and you don’t focus on the joy they’ll feel afterward, you haven’t gone far enough. So if you’re selling a stock trading software system and you talk about how they’ll trade successfully, you’ve only done half the job. Talk about the joy they’ll feel when they can brag about their success and the money they’ll have when they trade more effectively.
• Use descriptive words. Avoid cliches.

Joy is one of the only “pulling” emotions in your sales funnel. The others are “pushing” emotions because the sales funnel contact buys from you to avoid those other emotions but with joy, they are buying from you to get that emotion.