Automating Your Sales Funnel
As you develop your sales funnel, you want to make sure that you’ve filled all the gaps so no money is leaking out of your sales funnel that belongs in your business! Once you have the sales funnel solidified, it’s time to make it effortless. You can do this by automating your funnel.
Why Automate Your Sales Funnel?
The purpose of automating your sales funnel is to support your sales team and help them focus on what they do best – sell your products and services to the prospects that are ready to buy. Unfortunately, only 50% of marketing leads are ready to buy initially. You need an automated process to help the other portion of your leads move through your sales funnel.
Many times prospects need additional time and information before they are ready to purchase. You can automate the process of sending the information using Infusionsoft. This allows your sales representatives to focus on the personal contact most needed by those who are ready to purchase. Not only do you save time and increase sales up front, but you also move many more of your prospects into the “ready to buy” category. As a result, you not only increase sales right away, you get more sales over time as well!
What Parts of Your Sales Funnel Can Be Automated?
There are two parts of your sales funnel Infusionsoft can automate: the contact phase and the engagement phase. When someone needs to be contacted, and the sales representative does not make contact, automation can take over. You can send emails to follow up with them, and then create a task for your sales representative to follow up on a specific time and date. All of this can happen automatically, allowing your sales team members to move on to the next lead without a lot of paperwork or manual effort.
Secondly, you can automate your engagement phase. By using Infusionsoft to send informational emails and free documentation, you can educate your prospects and move them closer to being ready to make a purchase. Then use lead scoring to automatically bring prospects to the attention of your sales team when they display actions that indicate they are ready to buy.
How to Automate Your Sales Funnel
Automating your sales funnel involves creating a campaign within Infusionsoft that allows you to track a lead through the contact, engagement, and qualification phases. This campaign might look like this:
Within each of the two stages, you want specific emails with delays between each one.
For the contacting stage, your sequence might look like this, with the sales representative trying to make contact between each one:
- Just tried to call you and missed you!
- Still trying but can’t reach you (one week after the previous email if no contact is made)
- Should I give up trying to reach you? (one week after the previous email if no contact is made)
- I’m giving up (last contact attempt one week after the previous email if no contact is made)
For the engaging stage, when they are actively engaged with the sales team but not yet ready to buy, automation can help them move through the sales funnel. The types of information you can use include:
- Free reports sharing some information about the industry, products, or services you offer
- Case studies showing the effectiveness of your product or service
- A list of frequently asked questions, with answers of course!
All of the emails you send should include a call to action inviting the prospect to take whatever next step you would like them to perform: setting up a call-back, downloading a report, sending back additional questions, or something else.
Sales funnel automation helps your robust sales funnel become almost effortless. Of course, all automation needs to be supported by the human presence of your sales team. When you combine automated lead scoring with sales funnel automation, your salespeople focus their time on the most high-quality prospects. By utilizing automation, you can maximize your sales and profit!