How to Build An Effective Sales Leads Funnel: A Beginner’s Guide

What’s the sales lead funnel definition for your business? It’s the process of nurturing and guiding potential customers through the stages of the buying journey. It includes initial product or service awareness to convert visitors into paying customers. 

You must know every essential detail to create a successful sales funnel. It’ll help you attract and qualify leads by capturing their information. The sales funnel also enhances Customer Experience (CX) by providing relevant and personalized content to leads at each stage of the funnel. 

But, to make it happen, you must also learn about all funnel stages and how to optimize them. To help you out, here’s a complete guide on the topic.

A To Z Details Of Sales Lead Funnel Stages 

Building a successful sales funnel for your business seems overwhelming and too much work. So, let us make it easier for you. 

Instead of following tons of steps, focus on these 4 areas: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action or AIDA.

Below we'll explore how to apply the AIDA funnel to your sales process using outbound marketing. Plus, we'll explain how to guide your target audience through their buying process. So, let's start with the stages: 

1. Awareness/Attention Stage

The Awareness Stage is the first stage you'll have to cover while defining your customer journey. You'll make your potential customer aware of the product or service you want to sell. 

In this stage, your target prospects recognize a problem or need within their workplace/business. They search for information and solutions. Thus, your goal is to grab their attention and make them aware of your product or service as a potential solution to their problem.

Marketing tactics to generate leads at this stage:

According to Econsultancy, up to 50% of businesses do not understand their customer journey. Thus, using marketing tactics to create your customer journey and capture the attention of your target audience already pushes you ahead of the competition. 

Focus on creating a message that resonates with their pain points and needs. You must use: 

1. Appealing subject lines
2. Visual elements
3. Headlines to get their attention. 

You can use the outbound marketing strategies mentioned below to get your message in front of your target audience: 

1. Targeted email campaigns: Sending personalized emails to a specific group of individuals. It aims to achieve a specific marketing goal. Personalized subject lines receive 50% higher open rates than generic subject lines. 
2. Cold calling: Making calls without any past interaction to potential customers to promote your product or service.
3. Direct mail: Sending physical promotional materials directly to potential customers' mailboxes. Direct mails get up to 37% of the response rate.
4. Advertising: Pushing messages to a large audience through TV, radio, billboards, and print.

Key metrics to measure the success of the awareness stage:

1. Social listening/mentions of your business on social networking sites.
2. Views on product demos or promotional ads videos.
3. Social media engagement: Comments, shares, and likes.
4. The number of new marketing leads and closed sales.

2. Interest Stage

It's the second stage you focus on while creating your customer journey. In this stage, your target customer has learned about a product or service. Now, they are interested in exploring it further. 

Thus, they are more likely to research your product and weigh the benefits and drawbacks. So, here your goal is to continue capturing the customer's attention and keep them engaged. As such, you’ll be able to move them to the next stage in their customer journey.

Marketing tactics to nurture leads at this stage:

To generate interest from your target audience in your  product/service, you mainly need to do two things:

1. Demonstrate how your solution can help solve customers' problems and other challenges. 
2. How your product is different from what your competitors already offer.

• Share case studies, customers' testimonials, and other high-value content. 
• Prove your product's effectiveness by offering a free trial. 
• Convey your message in the language that speaks to your target audience to keep them engaged and interested. 

Key metrics to measure the success of the Interest Stage:

1. Clicks from the SERP, social posts, or any other clicks leading people to your content.
2. Engagement Rate
3. Average Time on Page
4. Scroll Depth
5. Email Open Rate
6. Email Bounce Rate
7. Email Response Rate

3. Desire Stage

The Desire/Evaluation Stage is the third stage in building the customer journey. In this stage, your customer decides to move forward with purchasing your product or service. The customer will likely evaluate your product’s price, quality, and features against their need and budget. 

The Desire/Evaluation Stage aims to create a strong desire for your product and help the customer make a confident purchase decision.

Sales tactics to guide leads through this stage:

To build desire for your  solution, you must create a compelling case for why it is the best solution for your target audience. Emphasize your product's unique features and benefits, and explain how it can help them achieve their goals or overcome challenges. Use emotional appeals, visuals, and storytelling to create a compelling and memorable message.

Key metrics to measure the success of the Desire stage:

1. Engagement rate: Total engagement/Total followers*100
2. Lead conversion rate: Total number of leads/ Total number of visitors*100%
3. Average deal size: Total revenue earned during a given period/ Total number of closed-won opportunities in that period
4. Time to purchase: Average length of time it takes for a potential customer to move from the Desire Stage to the purchase stage measured in days/number of sessions, and transactions.

4. Action Stage

The Action/Purchase stage is the final stage where the customer closes a deal. The stage aims to provide customers with an easy and seamless purchasing process and turn them into happy and satisfied customers. 

The purchase itself is the culmination of the customer's journey and is the ultimate goal of the marketing and sales process.

Sales tactics to close deals at this stage:

1. The most important element of the Action Stage is to provide a compelling and clear CTA. 
2. You can provide CTA in different forms, such as booking a product demo, signing up for a free trial, or clicking to make a purchase. 

However, your responsibility doesn't end here. You need to frequently follow up with leads and ensure a consistent conversation with the prospects. 

1. Revenue generated (monthly, quarterly, and yearly) 
2. Lead to Close Conversion Rate (CVR)
3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
5. Total opportunities created

Post-Purchase Stage

In the Post-Purchase Stage, the customer evaluates their experience with your product or service. The stage aims to turn a one-time customer into a loyal customer and encourage repeat purchases.

Source

Marketing and sales tactics to retain customers and generate repeat business:

• You must contact customers for feedback, offer support, or provide incentives for repeat business, such as discounts or loyalty programs. 
• The post-purchase stage is also an opportunity for companies to identify areas for improvement in their products and customer experience. Keep your customers engaged by providing regular follow-ups, educational content, and personalized offers. Make use of lead scoring to prioritize leads based on their level of engagement and interest.
• Personalized marketing campaigns, such as email marketing and loyalty programs, can also engage customers and keep them interested in your brand. 

Additionally, implementing upsell and cross-sell strategies, such as offering complementary products and services, can help increase the lifetime value of each customer.

Key metrics to measure the success of the Post-Purchase Stage:

1. Average customer lifetime value (CLV): Average order value x Purchase frequency
2. Return on investment (ROI): ROI = Net profit ÷ total investment
3. Order gap analysis: 365 ÷ Purchase frequency metric = Avg. number of days between purchases

Creating A Sales Leads Funnel Strategy

When you want to create a sales lead funnel strategy, you need to take many factors into consideration. The most important factors include: 

1. Defining Your Target Audience And Buyer Personas

Target audience refers to the specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing efforts. It can be defined based on:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Job title
• Industry
• Company size
• Budget, and more.

On the other hand, buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on relevant research and data analysis. They help you understand your target audience deeper, including their pain points, motivations, and decision-making processes.

There are several methods to define your target audience and buyer personas, including:

1. Market research: Conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews with your current customers to gain insights into their demographics, behaviors, and pain points.
2. Data analysis: Analyze customer data, such as purchase history, website analytics, and social media activity, to identify patterns and trends.
3. Competitor analysis: Research your competitors' target audiences and marketing strategies to see what's working for them and to differentiate yourself.
4. Personas: Develop fictional representations of your ideal customers based on your research findings, including demographics, goals, challenges, and behaviors.
5. Customer feedback: Ask for customer feedback through post-purchase surveys, review sites, or in-person interactions to better understand their experiences with your brand.

By combining these methods, you can comprehensively understand your target audience. Plus, you can develop accurate buyer personas to guide your marketing and sales efforts.

2. Identifying The Main Pain Points And Challenges 

You must learn your target audience's main pain points and challenges. They help develop a  solution that meets your target customers’ needs and provides real value. Some common methods for identifying pain points and challenges include:

1. Ask customers directly about their experiences with the current products they use. Ask about any limitations or inefficiencies they encounter.
2. Research what your competitors offer and what gaps or limitations exist in their solutions.
3. Monitor social media and online forums to understand customers’ experiences with products they use and what they wish was available.
4. Work with your sales team to understand objections and obstacles customers encounter during the sales process.

3. Creating A Value Proposition 

By value proposition, we mean a statement that clearly communicates your product's benefits and unique features. It tells customers why your product is the best solution for your target audience's challenges. 

To create a value proposition that can help you build a successful sales funnel, follow these steps:

1. Identify the key issues your target audience faces. Then, showcase your product's unique features and benefits that address these issues and differentiate them from competitors.
2. List your product's specific benefits, such as increased efficiency, improved productivity, and access to unique features.
3. Prioritize the most important benefits and features, and craft a concise statement summarizing them.
4. Test and refine your value proposition through customer feedback and testing.

4. Optimizing for Continuous Improvement

Continuous refining of the sales leads funnel and data-driven decision-making go hand in hand. These processes complement each other and are critical for organizations that want to remain competitive, make informed decisions, and drive business success. 

Here are a few tips to ensure continuous optimization of the sales funnel: 

1. Define your lead funnel stages: Clearly define the phases of your sales lead funnel. It includes lead generation, lead qualification, lead nurturing, and conversion.
2. Track and measure key metrics: Track metrics such as lead volume, lead-to-customer conversion rate, and time to conversion for each funnel stage. It will give you a clear understanding of where improvements can be made.
3. Test and optimize: Continuously test and optimize your lead funnel by making small changes and measuring their impact. Focus on areas with low conversion rates and experiment with different strategies to improve them. 
   Use A/B testing to improve different elements like call-to-actions (CTAs), email campaigns, and landing pages.
4. Personalize the lead nurturing process: Personalize the lead nurturing process to build trust and rapport with leads and better understand their needs and pain points.
5. Monitor lead quality: Regularly assess the quality of your leads to ensure you are not wasting time on leads that are unlikely to convert.
6. Collaborate with sales and marketing teams: Collaborate with your sales and marketing teams to ensure a seamless transition from one stage of the funnel to the next. 

5. Integrating Technology Into Your Sales Lead Funnel

You must make friends with technology to enhance your sales lead funnel. Use marketing automation and CRM tools such as HubSpot and Salesforce. They can help your business: 

• Streamline its sales process
• Automate repetitive tasks
• Improve lead tracking and management. 

Thus, this results in:

• Improved sales performance
• Increased efficiency
• Timely follow-up for a better customer experience

By using reputed marketing automation tools, you get the advantage of the following services: 

• Lead nurturing workflows to deliver personalized content. 
• Manage and track services to access leads, opportunities, and customer interactions in one central location. 
• Sales forecasting to predict future sales based on historical data. 
• Data analysis capabilities to identify trends and insights and to make data-driven decisions.

Real-world Examples Of Developing And Integrating Automation In Sales Lead Funnel Strategy 

Here are some examples of businesses that Integrate technologies and automation into their sales leads funnel strategies: 

Example 1: Sales Leads Funnel Strategy Development by Twilio

Let's take the example of Twilio, a service that offers communication APIs to service developers. Its product allows them to embed voice calling and text messaging into a software application or a product. Let's explore Twilio's sales lead funnel strategy: 

• Top of the funnel:

Twilio ranks high for the key term "communication APIs.” It’s accessible to prospects on social media and through its self-paced game made for learning Twilio.

It uses different CTAs buttons guiding prospects where they want to go next (I.e., request to talk to a sales representative, create a free Twilio account, etc.)

• Middle of the funnel:

Sales reps leverage the data collected in the opt-in form, such as the job title, company name, and product in which the leads are interested. It lets Twilio sales reps ask the right questions and drive a valuable sales conversation.

• Bottom of the funnel:

Twilio presents hyper-specific pages to leads who see it as their solution, such as in-depth documentation, use cases, and customer stories. The  service ensures they provide information that's relatable to the lead's industry and current scenario.

Example 2: Marketing Automation Integration In The Sales Lead Funnel By Avison Young

Let's take the example of Avison Young, which is a full-service real estate advisor at a global scale. 

Avison Young is powered by more than 5,000 people across over 120 markets. The company's team aims to create real economic, environmental, and social value for clients. Some of the major pain points of the company were: 

• Low user adoption.
• Difficulty in using previous CRM leading to manual, time-consuming processes.
• The siloed CRMs caused a barrier to updating timely information and best practices among its global offices. 

Avison Young switched to the HubSpot CRM Platform, which changed its approaches toward sales, marketing, and other operations. The company benefited in the following areas: 

• Easy-to-use features encouraged user adoption in 4 months from 23% to 90%.
• The sales team got to view global clients and sales activities through a single platform.
• Increased accuracy of revenue forecasting through updated cross-funnel sales information
• Seamless collaboration among global office teams.

6. Implementing Lead Nurturing And Scoring To Prioritize And Qualify Leads

Lead nurturing and lead scoring are two important strategies for prioritizing and qualifying leads. Here's how to implement them:

1. Define lead nurturing campaigns: Identify the stages of your lead nurturing process and create campaigns to deliver relevant and personalized content to leads at each stage. It can include email campaigns, webinars, and targeted content.

2. Implement lead scoring: Lead scoring is a method of assigning a numerical score to leads based on their behavior and level of engagement. It helps sales teams to prioritize leads based on their likelihood of converting.

Continuously track and measure the results of your lead nurturing campaigns and adjust your strategies accordingly. Pay attention to open rates, click-through rates, and sales lead conversion rates to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Conclusion

We covered everything from defining a sales leads funnel to optimizing its stages. You can generate leads, convert them into paying customers, and ultimately grow your business revenue. Carefully go through the section explaining the strategy to create a sales lead funnel to ensure you are using available resources efficiently and effectively. 

Continuous optimization and the use of technology can make your strategy even more powerful. 

If you feel reaching and nurturing leads is overwhelming for you, let the job get done by experts on your behalf. Join hands with Revnew, an outbound marketing service that guarantees consistent leads flow into your pipelines.