What are a Sales funnel?

Sales funnel also known as revenue funnel and this basically refers to the process by which a company finds, qualifies, and sells its product to the customers or the buyers. In this process, companies need to do good research on the market and have to understand their customer's needs and wants. On understanding the customer and segmenting the market company needs to target their specific customers for selling their products. Completely understanding the customer and giving a perfect sales pitch to them helps the customer to make the decision to purchase from the company.

What is the process and stages involved in making a sale?

The typical sales funnel may be divided into many stages depending on the sale but the ideal sales funnel may have the following stages which help to find out potential customers, close the sale, and make them loyal customers for your business and referrals in the future:

Prospecting: In this step, one has to find the potential customer and determine whether they have a need for our product and services. The main aspect in this step is to know whether our customer is able to afford it or not, and this is known as knowing the qualification of the customer. By checking the qualification of the customer, the stakeholder of the company will remain satisfied and help the sales to progress in the same and correct direction.

Preparation: This step includes preparing ourselves for interaction with a salesperson and having all relevant information about the company and product. This will become the initial contact with the potential customer. The preparation must be in the direction of customer needs.

Approach: This step deals with meeting with the client or customer either face to face or virtually. There are mainly three approach methods:

Premium Approach: Presenting the potential customer with the gesture of gratitude and one can also add some gifts or offering into it.

Question Approach: By asking relevant questions with the client and can be more interactive with the client. This also helps the company or salesperson to understand more about the client.

Product Approach: In this approach the giving of the prospect a sample or free trial to review and evaluate the company’s service.

Presentation: In this phase, one should be capable of delivering and demonstrating about the company and product. One should demonstrate how actively the product and services meet the demand and needs of a potential customer.

Handling Objections: This is a very crucial process to convert a lead into a potential customer. This requires good listening skills and a person should be able to address all queries of the client. This is the process that was dropped by many salespeople and which leads to the failure of the sale.

Closing: In this one will get the decision with the client to move forward. The closing may be partial that the client may give some other future date to make a booking for the product or service or may reject the deal or if everything goes right then the lead may be converted into one progress.

Follow-up: Once you have closed the sale then it became most important to follow up with the customer and be in contact with them. This step will help you to get referrals and progress. One can follow-up a customer by taking feedbacks from customers and also by keeping an eye on their buying behavior and this will helps to make the relationship with the customer.