There is a serious flaw running rampant in the marketing world–and it’s hurting small businesses left and right. Sales Funnels. Now before you click off and determine I’ve gone batshit crazy–here me out. The concept of sorting through leads and helping them through your product line–that IS a thing. The part of sales funnels that IS NOT a thing is the idea that the process is linear and easily managed. Intrigued–I figured you would be. Stay with me for the next 5 minutes and discover why your sales funnel isn’t working.
Sales funnels look more spiderwebs than upside down triangles.
Everywhere on the internet, sales funnel training seems to show the same image–upside down triangles. And in a super general sense that kinda works–but not really. Although the visual of narrowing down prospective clients comes through, the complexity of the process and how people enter the funnel does not.
Your clients and customers will all be entering your funnel at different places on their journey. Some people will admire you and look for free content, others will need a midrange product and then there are those go-getters that need your big sexy ultimate offering. You have to have contingency plans for each of those scenarios AND what they think they need might be wrong–which means you need to be educating them about that along the way.
This is why email nurture sequences, consistent messaging across platforms, and cohesive website copy are all so important. They help people figure out where they need to be and if they end up in the wrong place it helps course correct them to the place that will benefit them most.
Not sure how to map this out? I find that similar to how I walk you through how to map out your client experience in this guide here, sticky notes of various colors really help out! Start by placing all the places where people can enter your funnel and then start adding more sticky notes to get them to each of your products. If there is a hole–you probably need either a nature sequence to connect to the next product OR a whole new product offering to bridge that gap.
Remember: Not everyone will move from low to medium to high-ticket offers. Some people will jump to the top and stay, some might start at the bottom and jump to the top, some might flip flop around or want multiple offerings at once. It’s important to think out WHAT would motivate each action. From each offer think of what a yes, no, and maybe would do and build off that. Grow that web!
Misunderstanding your ideal client means your amazing product isn’t in front of the right people.
When creating a sales funnel every single touch point is designed with a certain person in mind. It is critical that the wording, emotions, struggles and solutions are all things that resonate with the person you are speaking to. If you are not communicating to them at their level, it’s honestly going in one ear and out the other–if they are even listening.
Guess what?! It is extremely common for business owners to have a skewed idea of their ideal client. And it all stems from personal bias. Most business owners build their ideal clients off assumptions–not facts. That my friend allows space for personal biases to creep in and taint the ideal client persona.
- Do you struggle with spending money? That might lead you to believe your ideal client will too and under price your offering–which in turn alienates your ideal client who actually feels low priced offers offer less quality.
- Are you battling goddamn imposter syndrome and feel like you have to make 3000 freebies in order for people to consider you an expert? Too many freebies actually can have the opposite effect. That might give the impression that if they wait–you’ll just make another freebie rather than seeing the value of one great freebie and investing in your expertise.
- Do you feel that how things look aren’t important, that the content is what’s important? This may be different then your ideal client who may be a visual or digital processor who values how things look. They may feel overwhelmed by a lack of visuals, or balanced graphics, causing them to not even consider your amazing content.
- Do you find hate wasting time reading sales pages and feel a video is just more efficient? Clients that would absolutely benefit from your content might jump and skip over videos looking for sales pages to read, or ebooks to download. If they aren’t there–your content gets skipped.
These are just a few examples–but there are millions more. The big kicker here is that if you are building your business with this skewed perspective you’re actually attracting people that aren’t ideal. Which in turn causes frustration, resentment and burnout.
So in order to combat this when building offers, writing emails and copy, designing graphics, etc–it’s imperative that you reference your analytics. Inside your analytics are the secrets to tugging at the heartstrings of your ideal clients.
Nurturing a quality lead isn’t instant–ideal clients require time to get to know you.
Too many times I talk with business owners that want more conversions–and they want them now! As much as I get the sentiment– the reality is people need time. It’s important to build rapport with your newbie audience before jumping in a high ticket service offering.
To be clear–some people might convert super quick. They are fast decision makers and know what they want–it’s just not necessarily how everyone else will act. And we need to have realistic expectations of what your average ideal client timeline to conversion is. So how do you figure this out?
If you have been booking ideal clients and want to speed up the timeline–look through the people who have converted and review their history.
- How did they join your list?
- What emails did they open before converting–and how many total did it take?
- What freebies did they download?
- What blog posts did they read?
- How long were they on your list before converting?
Once you have all that information, look for patterns across all the leads and figure out what information was essential to your ideal client converting. Use that information to build a new flow and be sure to give the new clients the time they need..
If the clients you’ve been booking are making you frustrated, anxious, and resentful–your ideal client is probably skewed and needs to be refined. Look at all the people you’ve worked with in the last few months and reflect on these questions:
- What is it about these clients that pushed your buttons?
- Is what you are offering actually a struggle for the people you love working with?
- Where is the resentment aimed, at the client or your workload in relation to compensation?
- Are the people working with you just not prepared for the actual service you provide?
Moving forward from this point will require a bit of work–but it will be so worth it! Typically figuring out your next move requires some outside input from a strategist or marketing specialist. They can look at your existing audience and the answer to your questions above and find a way forward for you based on generalized data until you too are booking ideal clients and can collect concrete data to refine your funnel.
Remember–the time you’ve spent with these not quite right clients has value. It is teaching you things about your business, who you actually want to work with, and how you’ll acquire the people that light you up!
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I want you to know that wherever you are on your biz journey–you’re doing amazing! If you’re in copy/paste mode and it’s working that’s great! If you’re ready to dig into your unique brand’s way of doing things that’s great too! The fact that you are here learning, growing, and evolving how you’re running your business to work FOR you is what is most important. If you need help reach out here–the team and I are ready to assist you and help you make shit happen.
Speaking of which–if you’re wondering if tweaking, creating, and evolving your sales funnel can happen during Make Shit Happen Hour–it absolutely can! It’s kind of a topic we touch on each session, so if you’re looking to build your funnels and want some guidance come join us!
