A sales funnel is not just a statistical report or a graph of a company’s sales. It is a sequence of steps a potential customer takes — from showing interest in a product or service to completing a purchase or concluding a cooperation agreement.
Sales funnel visualization
Sales funnel
How to create a sales funnel
Building an effective sales funnel is a key step in the sales process and creating sales scripts . After all, a sales funnel is an important element that structures interaction with potential customers, optimizes processes, and increases conversion. In this section, we will look at how to create effective sales funnels.
Analyze the customer journey and develop funnel stages
Understand where your customers are learning about your product, where they show interest, and when they’re ready to buy. Break down the sales process into clear stages and tailor your funnel to meet the needs of your customers at each stage.
Set transition criteria between stages
Identify what actions indicate a customer is ready to move on to the next stage. Standardize the sales process and create a clear algorithm telegram data of actions for sales managers to help move the deal forward to closure.
Choose a sales funnel building tool
Simple tools like Google Sheets, which track deals and contacts, are great for getting started. As your business expands, you may want to consider specialized funnel building systems, such as CRM systems.
A CRM system clearly tracks deals at can you innovate without structuring internal processes? every stage of the sale and stores all deal-related information. Managers automatically receive reminders and tasks, which helps manage the sales process effectively, and your team can focus on driving deals to successful closure.
Create separate funnels for different products or segments
If your business offers different bfb directory products or works with several types of customers, develop separate funnels for each segment. This will allow you to flexibly manage sales, taking into account the characteristics of different groups.
Calculate the ideal sales funnel size
Once you have a sales goal, divide it by the average deal value to find out how many deals you need to close. Then, using the average conversion rates for each stage of the funnel, calculate how many leads you need at each stage. This will help you build a realistic and effective sales funnel that will help you achieve your business goals.
Constantly improve your sales funnel
Once you have your sales funnel up and running, it’s important to maintain its effectiveness and continually improve it. One way to do this is to not keep deals in the active funnel that have a near-zero probability of closing or deals that are significantly delayed in closing.
You should also carefully review and update the data in the funnel to have up-to-date information about each deal. Regularly discuss key deals with the team and look for optimal solutions for their successful closing. Work with new sales methods, for example, the SPIN method .
Effective sales funnel in NetHunt CRM
In NetHunt CRM, you can easily customize your sales funnel to your business processes to conveniently track deals. Follow these simple steps to create a sales funnel in the system:
Open the “Deals” folder.
Select “Card View”, group deals by the “Stage” field, and you’ll see a sales funnel. You can customize how many stages you want in the funnel.
On a Kanban card, you can display information that you need to quickly access and evaluate a deal. For example, you can display the responsible manager, deal size, time in the deal stage, priority, and so on. To change the deal settings (for example, display deal amount or number of days in the stage), click Card Settings.
You can group deals within each stage according to your preferences, such as showing the highest priority deals first. You can also see the total deal value for each stage of the funnel and the average deal value.
Sales funnel visualization in NetHunt CRM
Sales funnel in NetHunt CRM
In NetHunt, you can create as many funnels as you need.
You can filter deals by the parameters you consider most important to track. For example, save funnels like these:
sales funnel for each manager separately;
sales funnel by territory (to view active deals in the USA, UK, etc. or in cities, such as Kyiv, Dnipro);
agreements on certain lead acquisition channels ;
deals that are scheduled to close this month.
In NetHunt CRM, you can modify and customize the funnel: hide unnecessary stages and change their display color, edit the content and sorting of cards, display the funnel for each manager, etc.
Types of sales funnels
Let’s look at some of the popular types that successfully convert potential customers into paying buyers.
Lead generation funnel (or lead acquisition funnel)
This sales funnel is designed to attract new customers and develop business relationships with them in the early stages (before they are ready to make a direct purchase). One of the most popular types of funnels and one of the first search results for the query “sales funnel example”.
The basic idea of a funnel is this: a company attracts the attention of its target audience through marketing strategies and channels. This can be advertising on social networks, content marketing, sending out emails, etc.
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Sales funnel
A basic sales funnel is a tool that is suitable for companies where the sales process is quite simple, and customers quickly make a decision to purchase a product or service and sign a cooperation agreement.
Upsell funnel
This sales funnel is a tool used for existing customers. Maintaining contact and creating upsells and cross-sells is less expensive than acquiring new customers. This strategy increases the average check and retains the customer in the long term.
In this case, after making a purchase, the customer should enter a new up-selling funnel.
Cross-selling funnel
Such a sales funnel is a tool aimed at increasing revenue and sales profitability by offering additional products or services to customers who have already purchased something.
Marketing funnel
This type of funnel focuses on engaging your audience through content and other promotional methods. Marketing funnels are used to build brand awareness and gradually nurture leads through engagement with various materials, such as articles, videos, webinars, and newsletters.
With different funnels, businesses can flexibly adapt to changing market conditions and achieve better results in sales and marketing , including inbound marketing . In such cases, a marketing funnel will help. However, the final choice of funnel type depends on the unique characteristics of your business, the characteristics of your target audience, and your marketing strategies.
No matter what sales funnel you use, it’s important to constantly analyze and optimize it. Analytics will identify potential problem areas and indicate opportunities to improve the funnel’s effectiveness.
What a sales funnel does for a business
A clearly structured sales funnel has at least seven advantages:
1. Systematizes sales and processes
A funnel clearly divides the sales process into stages, so you can focus on and optimize each one. Your sales team better understands where they are in the customer journey and what needs to be done to move them to the next stage and close the deal.
2. Optimizes customer interactions
By understanding the funnel, businesses can tailor their communications at each stage based on their customers’ needs and interests, increasing their chances of successfully engaging with the customer and closing the deal.
3. Identifies bottlenecks in the sales process
The funnel identifies the stages where potential customers most often stop or stop interacting. You will understand which stages have bottlenecks that prevent the customer from moving towards a purchase, such as insufficient input, poor objection handling, etc.
4. Identifies deals with higher priority and probability of closing
A sales funnel ranks leads by priority and likelihood of closing successfully. Sales teams can focus on the most interested or ready-to-buy customers.
5. Forecasts sales and plans resources
A sales funnel is a tool that predicts future sales based on the number of leads at different stages and likely closing dates. You will more effectively allocate resources, plan your budget, and make informed decisions about future marketing campaigns and other business activities.
6. Analyzes the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies
With a sales funnel, a business can assess which marketing channels and tactics are performing best at different stages of the sales funnel. Some channels may generate a lot of leads but have low conversion rates at the final stages. What does a business sales funnel provide?
7. Simplifies report creation thanks to the CRM system
A sales funnel combined with a CRM system automates and simplifies reporting. This is essential for tracking performance at each stage of the funnel, analyzing conversions, and evaluating team performance. Automated reports provide up-to-date data on priority deals, sales bottlenecks, and strengths, allowing you to quickly respond to changes.
Sales funnel example
Each stage of the funnel has its own characteristics and tasks to convert potential customers into real ones.
