In all kinds of marketing offline and online there is what is know as a sales funnel.
If you imagine a physical funnel and what its purpose is you have a good idea of what a marketing sales funnel might look like and what its function is.
The wide open top of a marketing sales funnel is where we gather leads for our offer and here, after identifying our target market, we usually gather leads.
How to gather leads in our target market varies.
A useful way of getting the attention of our prospects in order to encourage them to enter our funnel is to offer them some form of value in the form of education or a free gift of some sort.
People like to do business with people they like and respect as experts in their field so it is up to us to build a relationship and trust with our prospect before attempting to pitch them on our offer.
When we deliver massive value and show a genuine interest at the entry point to our sales funnel people will start to feel that they know us.
The more value we are prepared to offer when it seems there is nothing to gain, the more chance we have of having the opportunity to get in front of that person in the future.
Once the relationship is established we are in a position to offer one of our products which is of low cost, and again we offer massive value.
Now gradually our prospect has become a client and has seen that we have offered massive value up to this point so when we approach them with a higher ticket product or service they will be convinced that even though the cost is higher, the product or service will have the same massive value as before in proportion to its function.
The fact that we have delivered value all along means that when our client is choosing between us and our competitors even if our price is higher, they are sure to get massive value from us whereas they are not sure what they will get from our competitor.
The sales funnel can go on into infinity of course depending on where we want to take it.
It is important for us to understand this in our business model so when we acquire a client we can develop the potential of that client in this way.
Every client has the potential to be a client for our top end product or service if we operate with this model.
Some business owners wonder how some clients only come to them for certain products or services and go elsewhere for others that they may be in a position to supply.
The sales funnel model of marketing creates repeat business and quality clients for any business.
When you hear of some sales people selling only on price and only getting the business if their price is the lowest, the reason is that they are not operating with a sales funnel approach and their sales will mainly be one off situations.
I would advise all business owners offline and online to sit down with their team and establish clearly how they would like to build their sales funnel and establish clearly the levels and the destination in every area of their business.
When you have a clearly defined sales funnel it makes every part of your marketing more effective and gives greater value to your business and brand.