How does a sales funnel work? A sales funnel is different than your ordinary sales process in that it approaches the sale as an ongoing process rather than a one time "hit or miss" proposition.
If you are going to the work of finding and securing leads, it only makes sense to drop them into a sales funnel where you can sell again and again to the same lead. As they say, "it is 100 times easier to sell to an existing customer than to get a new customer." Having a sales funnel is key.
Here is an example of an easy way to take an existing system built to sell just one time, and turn it into a simple sales funnel that can triple your money.
Say you are dropping your leads onto a sales page that sells an ebook on "How To Grow Orchids" at $97. Your prospects come to the sales page, either buy or don't buy. Then, if you don't have a sales funnel, you have to go get more leads if you want to make more money. Here's how I would turn this into a sales funnel.
1. I would start the sales funnel by sending my leads to a squeeze page instead of a sales page. This puts your prospects straight into your sales funnel, where you will be able to contact them again and again - which means even if they don't buy now, they may buy a few weeks or even months down the road.
2. Then, I would send them a free gift. Often, I offer the free gift when I ask for the optin on my squeeze page. So, you may offer a free report on the subject of "How To Find Rare Orchid Suppliers" when you ask for their name and email. Important: be sure your free gift is of really high quality. Don't ever give your prospects anything that's not excellent quality, or you will lose them faster than a greased pig.
3. You can then drop your prospects on your sales page, for your ebook on "How To Grow Orchids." They may or may not buy, but this is not the end of the sales funnel, it's only the beginning so even if they don't buy you haven't lost anything.
4. If your prospects don't buy at this point, they are still inside your sales funnel. If you are following my plan, you will have made an autoresponder series and your prospects continue to get emails with more free gifts, and more opportunities to buy, until they become customers.
5. Once your prospects do buy, that is still not the end of your sales funnel, it is only the beginning, if you are doing this right. For example, after they buy your ebook on "How to Grow Orchids" they can be immediately presented with a chance to upgrade to "The Expert's Guide To Orchids" for $197. Shabambo!...You have now tripled your income on this lead.
6. Again, if they say "no" to this offer, you haven't lost your lead since they are now entered into your autoresponder sequence. If they do say "yes" then the next step in this sales funnel should give them another chance to add to their order. For example, they are then presented with a chance to attend a live teleconference on "How to Grow Orchids" where they can learn and ask questions live with an Orchid expert.
Say this teleconference is free, but during the call they are offered an Platinum Orchid Experts Package for $499. You have now turned a $97 sale into a $791 sale.
7. Your sales funnel can be as long as it makes sense the first time around. In this case I have shown you a sales funnel that has 7 steps:
1. The email
2. The squeeze page
3. The free gift
4. The sales page
5. The first upsell page
6. The second upsell page
7. The teleconference
Result: a sales funnel that brings in $791 rather than $97 per customer. And that's only the customers that go all the way trough your sales funnel. The ones that only go part way through (at $97 or $197) are no loss, they are just icing on the cake.
