How to Increase Sales by Targeting Sales Funnel Bottlenecks
The best way to increase sales is to improve the proficiency of the conversion process. There are three ways to increase organic sales:
- Generate more leads
- Expand the sale force
- Improve the sales conversion process
The great majority of sales organization’s can fix their sales problems economically and quickly by targeting the conversion process.
Generating More Leads & Expanding the Sales Force
There is a real cost to pouring more leads into the top of the sales funnel (i.e. trade shows, email campaigns, print advertising, pay-per-click, direct mail, radio, etc.). If you don’t have any leads or if you have salespeople without enough to do, invest here first.
However, if you have plenty of leads and no one to follow-up with them, you need to hire or expand the sales force (by far the most expensive way to grow). Before you invest anywhere, however, evaluate your current ability to convert leads into customers.
Marketing & Sales Roles
Remember, it is marketing’s role to generate leads and it’s the job of the sales team to convert those leads into customers. The conversion rate is determined by the number of leads it takes to convert one lead into a customer (new customers ÷ total number of leads = conversion rate). Compare your team’s conversion rate against the industry best or your top performers against the rest of the pack.
We tend to expect our sales team to convert leads that have been poured into the sales funnel, but do we really know what is happening inside the sales funnel? If marketing generated 100 leads into the top of the sales funnel and you converted less than 100 into customers at the bottom of the funnel, where did they go? Let’s take a peek inside the sales funnel and perform a simple diagnostic progression of the conversion process. You will quickly see three bottlenecks where the leads are lost.
The 3 Sales Funnel Bottlenecks
Qualification
The first bottleneck is in the Qualification phase. We all know about qualifying leads, but I’m talking about the lead qualifying you. The lead will ascertain if they are in the right place and dealing with the people they trust. If the lead disqualifies you, they opt out! This is the first phase of conversion, if you can’t establish trust, the leads opt out.
Consideration
The second rite of passage is in the Consideration phase. Here, customers determine if the problem or need they have warrants enough priority to take action. If it’s not urgent, they do not opt out, they grow stale. The key is to create urgency to avoid gumming-up your sales funnel, requiring the sales team to continue to call on them.
Selection
The final phase is Selection; this is when leads become customers. The question is, will they choose you or the competition? The challenge is generating preference to buy from you.
Did you know? A recent Harvard Business Review study found that $1 of sales training is the equivalent to $40 of advertising. Before you invest in growing your sales funnel, evaluate your conversion process.