The Sales Funnel

00:00 welcome everybody to the business growth factor um where we talk about building better businesses and uh I am here with Lyndon and my name is Josh um I'm the founder at baseo CPA and accounting and virtual CFO uh firm and uh Lyndon if you just want to briefly introduce yourself yeah thanks Josh thanks for the intro introduction there my name is Lyndon Smith I've got a company called Expansive EDGE and um we're we're pretty much the process people we uh we help you dive into your Ops and we help you develop um your training manuals your

00:34 operating procedures we help you digitize and and um document all all that information um yeah process mapping doc document documenting your processes that's uh that's where we we step in and so I guess talking about processes one of the things we're going to dive into is sort of the the mystery around marketing and sales funnels and kind of maybe breaking that in out into specific uh processes so um yeah maybe a bit of a starting point Lin in if you can maybe uh if it's possible to kind of Define some of the

01:06 stages of sales fun or what what is a sales funnel why why don't we maybe start with that question yeah um thanks yeah thanks for that so sales funnel is is really just your your process on how you move your your your targets uh through your sales process or your funnel really um to become a client of yours and it all starts with creating awareness checking that there's interest you know checking the intent and then converting them into a a client that's at a at a pretty high level there are I

01:39 think Josh we we had a conversation about this earlier today there are some extra steps in there that can be considered but um fundamentally what you what you're looking at is is creating that awareness and there is a whole lot of considerations around how you create awareness and these are all going to be marketing marketing activities so um as you'll remember a couple of episodes back we we were speaking about like lead generation and conversion in terms of the um Revenue drivers right um you know the awareness is all all about that those lead generation

02:11 activities yeah and then uh on the conversion side that's you know when you're actually taking the next step and and converting your that's the sales process really um in the bigger scheme of things yeah okay and I guess the idea of a funnel is it that at the top of the funnel you typically have a lot more uh a lot more prospects I suppose or a lot more people and then at the bottom of the funnel it's a lot less is that sort of the idea there well think about how many people come and visit your your website for example you know those are all um that's everybody in the awareness

02:45 stage so you could have you know 500 a th000 5,000 or even 20,000 um people that visit your your website depending on your business and and how what kind of marketing activities you have to to drive traffic there but everything that you're doing is is really creating awareness so if you got like 20,000 people visiting your website every month or every day um it doesn't mean that you know like those are uh clients those that's just creating Awareness on your services and your brand what it is who you are what you do how you do it that

03:18 type of stuff um and then you're you're con you're getting them to you become interested in in in in your business in your product and your services um and you sort of moving them down the funnel by creating good engaging content um and then I guess the the next step is you really want to you you've got these leads uh and I think we we spoke about this in in our first episode as well you want to you want to bring really high quality leads into your business so I'm going to use a a trades company in the

03:51 construction industry as an example because it's top of mind it's you know it's a lot of the clients that we have um when when they're doing a proposal for for for a potential client um they want to they're going to invest quite a bit of time putting that proposal together um you know they're going to go they're going to go to the job site they're going to have a conversation with the client they're probably going to have to do some measurements perhaps depending on the type of business maybe even some design work that goes into that um they're going to have to phone their sub trades or other contractors

04:25 they're going to have to get pricing on materials and uh so they've got to invest quite a bit of time time into that and you know you want to make sure that you've got a really high quality lead so that if you're investing the time there's a good uh you know good opportunity that you're going to close that uh that lead into a client so you know when that's a really it's a really good point and just just to quickly jump in too I mean one thing I found also with a lot of Contracting clients is it's quite often the owner uh that's involved in the estimating because that's one of the hardest parts to give up in uh in a Contracting or

04:58 construction type company and so you know from an owner's perspective like that's where a lot of the time is spent in estimating right and so if you can make sure that you're only really estimating for leads that are qualified and not you know putting together a whole bunch of estimates that are just going out the door and you maybe get a couple back that that are interested right so Josh I mean um you know what we've realized working with clients is it's super easy to get the leads coming in but it's the the the goal is to get good quality leads coming right I mean

05:31 if you're going to get you know 100 leads coming in in a week and you've got to service all those 100 leads and you're only um you're only moving them to the only moving like or you're moving a hundred of those leads to the next part of your funnel where you've got to provide a 100 proposals for them um you know like how how many of those are you going to convert yeah okay so you're saying there's maybe like a step above that the estimating or the proposal stage where you want to maybe filter something some people out Y is the idea there okay yeah so you

06:03 you're creating awareness you got like all these people that are now aware of your business you um you're creating interest um and I you mentioned this earlier um not in this conversation but it comes down to you do we put our pricing on our website you know like do we give away our our do we play all our cards um and sometimes yes you know like you you if you put your pricing on your web website it kind of disqualifies people that are you know simply not able to afford that or it's out of their

06:35 price but that's great get them out of there get them out of the way so that the people that are coming to you have already kind of pre-qualified themselves they're interested in your product they're interested in your service they're interested in doing business with you they uh they're already aware that you like this is going to cost me you know a couple, or whatever you know whatever it looks like so you don't have to compete against price anymore you comp competing with your you like your unique selling proposition you're competing on um you're having good uh good quality good services in place that

07:08 consistency like everything else that makes your your brand unique that awareness that you're creating you're sort of funneling them down you're when when they're interested in your product um they are a high quality lead at that point you it's not I'm not going to invest uh three four hours maybe even more putting a proposal together for some someone who who's kind of just kicking the tires and sure fishing for pricing right yeah and I guess uh I heard another way that this can be done as well is um if you do the drip campaign right so somebody does come to

07:41 your website and then they maybe download some kind of white paper or something off your uh website so you've got their email address then you can at least start giving them some information and almost pre-qualifying through the drip c campaign a little bit just being like these are typically the types of people that we work with this is typically like a price range that we're dealing with and so by the time you know they get to you know considering whether or not they want to work with you they know pretty clearly what it will look like at that point yeah and and youve you've already positioned them so that uh you know

08:13 they're they're not going to shy away from you know like your price when you eventually do pitch it to them right and it becomes a bit of a dance you know through that engagement to like just see that there's a good fit for your business and for what they're looking for and again it also depends on what business you're in right um some people might shy away not from the pricing but you know maybe there's just not a good fit in terms of Personality um I was on a call with someone earlier today and uh I was trying to establish whether there' be a good fit for our business and and

08:46 servicing our clients and supporting our clients and um you know it goes back to one of the uh conversations we had before about culture and values you know having this conversation with them to determine are they a good fit for um you know um for our business do they fit our values do they do they align with that um because that's what our customers are going to be looking for and this is what I'd be looking for in you know in If I Were a contractor this is what I'd be looking for in my sub trades are they good are they a good representation of who we are as a team um and then on the

09:19 other side of the coin and really the point that I'm trying to make here is your client a good fit for your business it's not all about taking their money it's about making sure that you're able to deliver a service that they going to be 100% satisfied with right and you know building that relationship with them because you get a good client in and you can you can maintain that relationship for years and years and years because um what's that saying it it takes uh like six to seven it cost six to7 times more to bring a new client on board than what it does just to to retain and continue servicing an

09:52 existing client right now that may vary from business to business because um you know you have um like end user that you're targeting um you know they only going to purchase potentially from you once and maybe they need if you're in the Contracting space maybe they got some Renovations that they want to consider further down the line they're going to call you but what you really gain out of those relationships in building Rapport and trust you know as you're going through the sales funnel filtering making sure that they're a good fit for your business as well is they're going to love what you do

10:25 they're you're going to have a good relationship with them so anybody that they um that they're engaged with that might be considering your services they're going to say hey go have a chat to Lyndon or go have a chat to Josh you know that they're brilliant you know they they help us with this um and and and it's that fit that you're establishing right from from the beginning yeah yeah it's almost uh I guess it gets into the whole consideration of lifetime value of of your client there right and uh making sure um yeah that you're bringing the the right clients in I heard somebody once put it this way they're like you

10:58 want to think about every new client who might be coming in if you would want to be working with them in five years from now right so sometimes you know if you have a company that's if say you're starting out a contracting business or whatever and you're like just wanting to take on any work that you can you know if you take on maybe a client who doesn't fit with your values that maybe you should have filtered out at the top of your funnel there um if you make them really happy which hopefully you will in the course of your work they may refer other people who are much like them and so you might end up working with clients who maybe you would prefer not to right so the filter there is important too

11:32 yeah you you you want to bring on high quality clients and and they're going to bring you high quality referrals 100% agree with that and you you do always want to identify your existing client base um you know like where do they fit are they like you know good good clients are they um you know are they your raving fans are they you know like are they really bringing you more business um are they paying you on time there's a whole lot of considerations around what makes this perfect client sure um you know or or are they like you know do they complain a lot are they high

12:05 maintenance are they just costing you a whole lot of time and those are the clients you probably would want to filter out of your business in some way you got to fire them at some point and um you're doing both yourself and them a favor by doing that you're doing yourself a favor because you're giving your business an opportunity to bring those higher quality clients into your business because you only have so much time to ser guys right exactly you're essentially allowing each person in the relationship to work with somebody who has shared Valu it's like let me show you the door

12:39 to somewhere where there's values that might align with yours so we've gotone a little bit off track here with with a sales funnel but but probably an important consideration getting to the value side of it right and and uh thinking through the values which we had talked about uh last episode there but so we talked about uh creating the awareness sort of have the interest level so once you kind of have like I guess qualified your leads a little bit what happens after that so once you've qualified your leads um that's where you're you're actually

13:11 going to go through the whole consideration phase and this is where you're you're going to provide them with a proposal or an offer um and yeah I mean it's different for for a bunch of different businesses for that contractor in the construction industry um you might be going out there getting the um measurements done contacting the sub trades um you know getting pricing on materials and offering them a proposal now when you're submitting the proposal to them um it's not about just

13:44 sending them an email and saying all right let's wait and and see what uh what comes out of this you you need to follow up right you need to you need to make sure for one hey did you did you get my email um or not even did you get my email just a notification bya SMS or whatever it is um hey I've dropped you I've dropped you your proposal it's in your inbox let me know if you've got any questions you know so it's not uh you have you had a chance to look at it are you ready to proce it's uh I've dropped it in your inbox um you know let me let me know when you've had an opportunity

14:17 to look at it and if there's anything that you want to discuss um and I'll uh you know when's a good time to follow up with you and then you put put it in their in their Court to to give you some feedback as you know like give me a call on Friday just like at the end of the week then they're expecting your call you don't come across as being um what's the overly aggressive overly aggressive for this sale or desperate for the sale you're really putting it in air Court to say like yeah call me on Friday we can it should give me enough time to do that they're expecting your call on Friday if

14:49 they haven't had an opportunity to look at it it's it's it's the same conversation all right super no no problem I got that and you know like so when when's a good time to follow up and then give us a call on Wednesday and by Wednesday you've they've kind of positioned themselves to have done the homework and reviewed your proposal and offer you some feedback and really what you want to be going for here is is the no right um right I mean I'm not saying go for no in a sense that uh you don't want the sail but until they've actually said No it's it's it's still on the

15:21 table though opportunity still there um you just want to have in your funnel a little bit of a a structure or some some process in place to to to trigger I guess to move it along a little bit Yeah to get you to that point where you're getting the no and then you can handle and document the objection put them into like a drip campaign so you know that you're still always top of mind maybe they hate you and you just want to remove they'll they'll unsubscribe right yeah or maybe that you know they're just not ready for it right

15:55 now maybe they found another contractor whatever it is um but you you want to you want to try and extract that information from them to understand how they've proceeded so you can understand how to better position yourself in future and that's really one of the one of the parts of you know building and and and developing and working your your your sales funnel is getting the feedback so that you can always tidy it up and it's it's like an iteration of um of your business right you'll get it to a point where it's streamlined it's optimized and you can hand that same sales funnel to a salesperson and they

16:27 can work through it you can train and develop them um you know on your sales process and um yeah they can just run with it so then is the idea within a sales funnel to try to map out each stage of your sales process then so that you could identify a lead and where they are within that process is that sort of the objective there yeah so we use it when we do our process mapping with uh with our clients um sales funnel is pretty much um like a part of the life cycle that we run through so um and

17:00 again so you're doing the awareness and you're you're funneling um you know percentage of the the those 20,000 um website views that you we were talking about earlier you're funneling them down into the next stage is which is interest funneling them down into you know proposal so considering your your product uh funneling them down into intent so getting ready to make the decision and um like really just closing them and getting the sale so you're funneling that 20,000 down into whatever it is maybe 550 like it depends on your

17:34 business and the volumes that you're working with and I guess if you you know just thinking through this if you have enough of a sample size then that has flown flowed through that funnel you can almost start to understand the numbers of your business such that you're like okay if we want to you know and this gets back to some of the revenue discussions we had in a prior episode if you want to make a certain amount of Revenue right like in the next year you're going to need a certain amount of clients because you're going to know how many you need to earn that revenue and so if you know okay well we have X

18:07 amount coming through the bottom of the funnel in a given year based on this amount coming in from the top of the funnel so if we want to maybe double the amount coming through the bottom we need to double the amount coming through the top and so then you know your marketing efforts are going to be a little bit more focused on a specific number 100% agree with you and that's that's that's the uh the accountants approach to uh to Market yeah we just got a bit Nerdy with numbers when we were talking about marketing nobody probably thought that would happen but we just did but but it's it's it's super valuable to take a look at you know your metrics and and to track it so um you know having those

18:41 numbers to say you know we've got uh you know 50 leads and um we're we're working them through so you really want to identify what your acquisition cost is for a new client and right like you say if you want to double the the bottom line well you got to double it from the top there and and work more more people through that funnel so or I guess even just like optimize within too right like maybe on the top of the hopper you have a lot coming in but maybe there's like a step along the way that you can optimize in order to just make that more efficient coming through the bottom yeah

19:13 and it all depends on the maturity of your business as well so um you know earlier stage businesses will will still be figuring out their funnel designing their funnel optimizing your funnel um but once you've kind of got that dialed into to a degree then you then you also are measuring and tracking um your your metrics so you you you do have an idea of hey I'm G to put like 100 bucks down here and that's what it's going to cost me to bring a new client well we need you know and we in order for us to grow by 30% you know we

19:46 need to invest maybe $3,000 or $30,000 depending on the you know obviously the size and scale of your business and um but that's that's the the idea behind it so for us to you really want to be taking the mindset of we're purchasing um more clients into our business that's that's what is costing us to bring a new client in our business and we need however many clients to to bring in here right okay um so when we think through then like those funnel

20:19 stages and how you need to you know sort of optimize each level what what are some ways that you can maybe do that if we sort of like talk optimization a little bit oh I love the question so uh business process mapping um you know you you gives you an opportunity to actually see where the bottlenecks are in your process um it also it allows you to to identify you know like who your targets are make sure that you're clear on your icps and and how you're working them through um different stages of your funnel

20:53 okay yeah um optimizing your funnels yeah just Pro you're like mapping it out like having it written or like a proper diagram in front of you to show you what it looks like training sta on that certainly optimizes it understanding where in each stage you need supplementary um or or you know like documents to support that templates scripts uh checklists perhaps that you're going through so training your staff on certain you know um steps in that process as well training them on

21:26 the actual process is really super important um and I guess we even see that with like say large companies right where you know if you go stay at the Marriot or something like that you stay at a large Hotel chain you know usually your experience is going to be very similar at different stages along that sales process too if you're say booking at a conference room or something you know you probably encounter similar scripting at different stages as well well they've they've got their business process um you know pretty ma um pretty clearly

22:00 and you know so they can train um you different groups or FR um different um hotels right uh and they'll get the same results it's like the McDonald's thing right you're going to McDonald's anywhere in the world and you kind of know what you're going to expect um you order a Big Mac and Fries it's uh you're you're you're you're it's a safe bet that uh you know what you're what you're do and actually you know thinking of that linen just to just to hop in there too and thinking of scripting in

22:33 the sales process I mean something I've kind of encountered and sort of realized is is what's going on here when you go through the drive-thru and you're ordering you know once upon a time you to be like okay what would you like and You' be like I want my coffee and I want my you know my bun or whatever it is that you're going to order from the drive-thru and then um they'll be like okay we'll see you at the next window but now if you notice and maybe it's where I live I don't know but the scripting is anything else and you're like oh okay yeah well I'll get this okay anything else and they'll keep scripting they'll keep saying anything else until you're

23:06 like nope then they're like okay cool we'll see you at the window right so I mean a simple adjustment to the scripting like that has probably resulted in huge uh additional revenues on the upsell front just from a sales script right absolutely yeah no it's uh and and and it's something that you keep on reworking it's never you know you you may have a dialed in but it's always something can be improved you know something while you're looking at it I mean how how how new is that concept of anything else I don't I mean but I mean there there could be something new

23:39 something you know like the the way people think you know it could be something that's happening um like AI for example you introducing something like that into your script or I I have no idea I don't have a good example but you know the world's evolving things are changing so you've always got to you know like look at where you can improve and optimize even your sales process your current sales process that is working right so what I hear you saying is like even though you've mapped out your your funnel and it's working really well and you've got it nicely scripted if you just set and forget it may it may

24:12 lose its efficacy over time you may have to revisit it periodically to optimize it more 100% And um you know that's that's uh it's it's really about staying above the the competition or you know like you're always going to be looking at what you're doing um what the market Market's doing and you know is there something that we can adjust here can we make it better um and it's that that that mindset of continuous Improvement even though it's working you're always going to be testing new things trying out new things and improving um your your your processes yeah awesome yeah um

24:48 so maybe just in interest of time here uh just kind of last thing to maybe talk about um any good ways to sort of like measure this or any tools that you would suggest or methods or processes to um you know if I hadn't mapped up my sales funnel you know what's my next step what tools can I use um where can I go from here what should I be measuring I think uh so one of the tools you could use is just uh just you know create a flowchart write down the steps create a flowchart understand what your

25:20 sales process looks like what your sales funnel looks like and then start measuring it so on a weekly basis start measuring how many leads you're getting in you know um we talk about awareness interest like that that bigger sales funnel if you can get access to those metrics um you know from maybe you've got someone who who or like Google analytics you could probably pull from there um get those metrics understand how many people are are reaching your site every month or every week um and then how many leads are you getting in

25:52 so so take a look at the the collective get all that information start tracking that every week and then seeing how your business is performing and how you're moving people from awareness to like being a lead through to converting them into a into a client so once you start tracking that that's really where you start getting results because when you when you start looking at an area in your business that's where your focus and attention starts moving and that's where you start improving right and optimizing things and I guess once you've mapped it out like in some kind

26:25 of flowchart so we're not even I guess you're saying you don't even have to use something fancy program at the beginning just you know use some diagram drag and drop images in PowerPoint or something like that mind map or something pen and paper there's some really cool tools that you can use for free um I think Meo is one of them Lucid charts we we use that exclusively in our business okay Microsoft Vizio I think I don't know how much the the solutions cost or if you can use a free version of it but you can just uh Google like a process mapping tool or you can use um like you said

26:58 PowerPoint and you can you can build it up blocks PowerPoint but uh it all starts with just sketching it out on a piece of paper and and getting clear on it there and then you can start moving things around and optimizing it in a software if you want to create like a nice graphic to to use to train your team on something um then you can get you into a software solution and um yeah okay and I guess once you've mapped it then you can maybe start to look at other um solutions for the actual management of your uh sales funnel because I know you know those platforms

27:30 like say hob spot or pipe drive or whatever that will help actually like track and monitor you know what your sales funnel looks like from a like a metrics perspective any thoughts on those at all or I have so many thoughts on those for for another uh episode but um yeah we didn't we didn't even touch on like a CRM and how that uh how you can move people through your funnel in a in a CRM as well it's probably the most effective way to to move leads or prospects through your through your funnel is is the yeah well maybe we'll

28:05 save that for another time and kind of talk about like an actual uh like how to how to best put that into place um but this is a really good summary of of yeah everything about sales funnels and some of the key steps to think about and and how to map it out and uh yeah hopefully everybody listening had had a good um a good dive into that so me to take away from me you mentioned the weekly thing so you know as in C I usually on a weekly basis I'm looking at a lot of the metrics uh just from a financial statement perspective but um a lot of the marketing and Lead components that

28:37 will you know basically funnel in and impact the Top Line you know the revenue line uh is pretty important too and so I think uh building that into the weekly reporting would be a good idea so that's going to be a takeaway for me for sure excellent lovely Josh thanks for uh thanks for the chat you bet yeah thanks Lyon thanks for listening yeah we'll uh we'll chat next time all right see you soon take care you bet