If you want to build a masterful sales funnel, you need look no further than Starbucks. Did you know that the Starbucks sales funnel is so successful that the fish of Boston Harbor have become caffeinated? It's true: scientists have shown that so many people are drinking coffee since the Starbucks phenomenon, fish are actually becoming high on caffeine from the "caffeine overflow" from large cities.
However you may feel about that, the fact remains that that's one heck of a success story, and Starbucks would be nothing without their many-faceted, far-reaching sales funnel. One of the examples of this I saw (and picked up, I might add) in a Starbucks in Washington State. This little item alone can tell you reams about the Starbucks sales funnel mastery.
It's called VIA, and basically, it's a portable coffee cup with six secret compartments inside of it. Inside these secret compartments, there are six little packets of "instant" Starbucks coffee. The idea is that "you never need be without your Starbucks again" even if you find yourself miles away from he nearest Starbucks, as they say.
I thought, "Hey, I know that feeling" - and I was hooked into this little sales funnel inside the bigger sales funnel that is Starbucks. You see, the Starbucks sales funnel is so sophisticated that you can actually find sales funnels within sales funnels in their marketing -a and that's why it pays to learn from them.
Here's how the sales funnel I was dropped into in this case works:
1. You start out entering their sales funnel by going in for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Whether you want to or not, every time you want a cup of coffee, you think, "Hmmm, I wonder if there's a Starbucks around." Whether this happens because their coffee is better, or has more caffeine, or is just more predictable than the local option, this happens more than you would probably like. A sales funnel starts with a great product that's easy to access.
2. When you finally find a Starbucks, of course there is a line and you have to wait while everyone orders their "tall skinny latte with a half shot vanilla shot and no whip cream" and so on. Meanwhile, you have nothing to do but reach over and pick up the closest thing at hand, which happens to be a "VIA" portable coffee cup. The sales funnel lesson here is that they KNEW you would be waiting, and rather than let you be bored, they gave you something to look at - something that would help you slip into another sales funnel, while you're waiting in the original one.
3. This sales funnel starts with the portable cup, and ends with you buying two things when you go into Starbucks in the future instead of one, thus participating in two of their sales funnels at once. That is because the VIA cup has those six secret compartments, which start out with six packets of instant coffee, so that you will "never be without your Starbucks." This also means that you will want to keep these compartments full, thus, when you go into a Starbucks in the future, you will not only fill up your Starbucks portable cup with a nice fresh, cappuccino right from the spigot, but you will also add between 1-6 packets to your order. So this little sales funnel actually ends with a "continuity" product, that you will never want to stop ordering.
We won't even talk about the CD's you see at the register, that introduce you to a new singer you never heard of, but they are playing on the speakers and you like their sound, so you pick up their CD and fall in love with them, and so on and...oops. Into another sales funnel you go.
Let's just say that if you are looking for ideas for how to build out your sales funnel, you need look no further than your local coffee shop. And in fact, that's how I have build a 3 million a year sales funnel out...starting with sending out one email to one prospect.
You see, I look at what goes on in the "real world" around me, then I apply it to my online business. To learn exactly how I do that, and how you can start your own sales funnel today using the methods that have proven to work for me, just click on the link below.
