Have you ever heard of a sales funnel before?
Chances are you have because it’s one of those buzz words being thrown around a lot. Chances also are you’ve already used one whether you realized it or not.
Nearly every company has one, but it may be extremely outdated or just not very good. When you know how to create your own sales funnels you become more powerful than you could ever imagine.
You not only have the ability to close sales and you gain the power to generate an ungodly amount of leads. Pair those two together and your life will never be the same.
But where do you start? How do you build one? Is it complicated? Do you need to have tech skills in order to create one?
I’m going to break down how to build your own funnels, what they cost, and more importantly, what you need to include in your funnel for it to be successful.
But there’s something I need you to know first before we start.
Funnels are a great tool but aren’t a magic pill for your business.
Too many times I’ve seen business owners get a fancy funnel but they don’t follow up with the leads.
Too many times I’ve seen business owners get a fancy funnel but they complain that the leads are bad.
Too many times I’ve seen business owners get a fancy funnel but they never promote it so the leads never come.
Don’t worry! I’m going to share with you the formula to follow so you won’t have that problem…as long as you’re willing to do the work. So let’s get started!
Step one. You’re going to need a software to create your funnel pages. There are tons of them out in the marketplace but there’s one I’m going to recommend for two reasons: it’s easy to use because it requires zero tech skills and the price can’t be matched for what it delivers. The software is Phonesites. It allows you to create a funnel in a matter of minutes. The cost is either $49 or $99 a month based on the plan you want.
Step two. You’re going to need a CRM (client relationship management system) for organizing your leads and your follow-up. Once again, there are tons of them out there but I’m going to recommend the one I use because it has served me well over the years. Active Campaigns allows you to organize your leads from hot leads, to warm leads, to cold leads. It also allows you to automate your email follow-up until the end of the time so your funnel can do the heavy lifting for you. You can get started for as low as $90 per month.
Step Three. You’re going to need an SMS automation system to automate your text message follow-up. Here’s why: no one answers their phones anymore but nearly every text message is read. If you’re following up manually, that time stacks up quick. You get paid when you close a sale, not for the time you spend texting leads. The SMS system I use is called Bird Eye. It allows you to automate your follow-up texts and create templates to send call-to-action blast texts to your leads. You’re looking at $200 per month for this system.
Step Four. You’re going to need an appointment booking system for scheduling sales calls. The last thing you want to do is play rope a dope through text trying to match up times. Do yourself a favor and get 10to8. 10to8 has a free plan to start and you can pay for the upgrades as you need them. The platform will allow you to create a “schedule a call” option where the leads book a time with you based on the availability you set. This will be a huge time saver for you!
Step Five. Put everything together and making sure each system talks to one another. You can do it yourself or you can hire someone to do this for you. You can hire someone to put this together for you for a couple hundred bucks and once it is set in place you don’t have to mess with it again.
Step Six. Put together your offer on your funnel page to attract the types of leads you’re looking for. If you’re building this yourself a great formula to follow is, “How to get X without having to do Y.” X being the thing they want and Y being the thing they don’t want. If you’re looking to have an expert do it for you then you’re looking at anywhere between $500 to several thousand dollars based on who you hire. Just remember: you get what you pay for.
Step Seven. This is the final step and where the pay-off is! It’s promoting your offer. You can promote it organically on social, which only costs you some time, or you can run Facebook ads directly to it. Either way, you have to get your offer in front of enough of the right people. Once you do, it will pay for itself and then some.
I’ve written another article that goes more in-depth on strategies you can use online to leverage your funnel. You can read it here.
And don’t forget… go get what you’re worth!
Until next time,
