What Is A Sales Funnel & How Can You Use One To Make Your Business More Profitable?

In this post we’ll take a look at what is a sales funnel and how you could use them for your business.

For an online business owner, a sales funnel is probably the most important marketing tool you have. And yet many entrepreneurs – both new and established – have no clear understanding of what a funnel is or how it works. 

As you can imagine, failing to fully understand this critical part of your business means fewer sales, lower profits, and ultimately, an unstable business. 

Selling products and services online gives you access to a worldwide audience. But this doesn’t automatically result in massive sales and a successful business. 

It takes hard work and effort to secure customers and make sales. That’s why it is especially frustrating when you dedicate time, energy, and resources into promoting your offers and see minimal results. 

It’s not enough to inundate your audience with messaging and links to your offer in the hopes that they’ll click and buy. 

Successful internet-based businesses rely on the power of funnels to move their products and services. And they know the best funnels are fueled by valuable, targeted, and well-timed offers. A funnel automates the sales process and puts you in control of what your prospects see and when. Create a funnel of multiple offers and you’ll quickly start to see greater revenue and results. 

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a process that leads your prospects from unqualified prospects to qualified buyers. It is wide at the entry point and gradually narrows, weeding out those that are not interested in your products or services. Funnels help businesses by making the sales process more efficient, predictable and automated. They’re also useful for tracking sales. Depending on your strategy you can have online and offline (or combined) funnel system.

Online the entry point is a website/landing page with an opt-in form that leads prospects to your email list where you build a relationship with them and periodically make them offers to gradually discover which subscribers are buyers also known as relationship marketing. The emails are usually automated as a sequence that takes place over time.  Also it’s not a bad thing when people leave the funnel. It means that the funnel is working to weed out those who are not truly interested.

The opt-in is also known as an ethical bribe. Which basically offers the prospect something in exchange for their details. If you have a product or service that can help them solve their problems and issues and its of value then they are more inclined to give you those details.

The opt-in can be an ebook, white paper, audio, video or some other free gift. Once the person opts in then a automated sequence of emails/text/videos can be delivered online in order to build a relationship which eventually turns into a sale.

A general funnel can look something like this

Opt-in > free gift (e.g. video) > upsell offer > down sell offer > product/services/ > webinar > online course  > off line course

(Funnels can very depending on the strategy and business)

You can have simple funnels to complex funnels depending on your business and offering. Online funnels are the best way to attract targeted prospects,  the kind of business you want to do business with and who’s problems you can solve.

If you have done your home work around your target audience then the right offers can be made at the right times , the idea is to help prospect with a problem they have and not what you think they need.

What Is a Sales Funnel of Offers?

A funnel is a visualization or map of the journey your target customer takes from the initial awareness stage to the final purchase. It is the process prospects go through to become a customer.

It’s called a funnel because it’s wide at the top (the entry point) and gradually narrows as the customer moves toward your core offer. The idea is to cast a wide net at first, attracting casual and serious prospects alike. You then present them with offers that will either move people down the funnel towards purchase or, eventually, remove them. 

The types of offers you present, and where you place them, is key to your funnel’s success. Some offer types include a lead magnet, low-ticket offer, one-time offer, order bump, upsell, and downsell. This list isn’t comprehensive, but it provides the foundation for all successful funnels. 

The point of these offers is to qualify leads for your core offer. Through your prospects’ reaction to these offers, you can learn who will buy from you and who will not. You can then weed out those who are not interested in buying anything. 

A Simple Funnel

At its most basic, a sales funnel consists of free content, which typically requires nothing of your readers. Many funnels begin with blog posts, YouTube videos, Facebook content, and other information readers can access at no cost. This is the “top” of your funnel. 

Next, you’ll have an incentive offer that requires a very small “payment” of sorts – typically an email address. You’ve seen this type of offer on websites all over the internet, and probably even signed up for some also known as a squeeze page. This is the free ebook or guide, video series, checklist, workbook, or other valuable content that is available in exchange for “opting in” to an email list. 

Once on your mailing list, you’ll then present your readers with a series of low-cost offers. Perhaps you have a low-priced ebook or a trial membership. 

You may also have a follow up sequence of emails known as autoresponders. These go out after the initial sign up. They are email messages designed to provide content and nurture you into getting to know about the product of service more so that over time you may purchase from the items in funnel.

Customers who purchase your low-priced product move further down the funnel, and are presented with more, higher-priced products. As they continue to buy, they move closer and closer to your top-end offers, which make up the bottom of your funnel. 

How Your Sales Funnel Works

If you imagine your funnel as looking like, well, a funnel, it’s easy to see that your free content—at the top—is consumed by the largest number of readers. Below that, your extreme low-cost item (available only for the cost of an email address) attracts a smaller subset of the true freebie seekers. Next, your low-priced products bring in yet a smaller group. 

Finally, as you near the tip of the funnel, only the loyalest of fans and customers will purchase your highest priced offers. 

Your job, as the business owner, is to ensure that your funnel leads buyers naturally from the top, free offers all the way to the bottom. The more buyers you can keep in your funnel, the more money you will make. 

Most new—and even established—business owners can easily envision the top of the funnel, but if you truly want your business to grow, you must master the entire process, and that starts with understanding what a funnel really is and how it works. 

Heres an example of a sales funnel:

Niche Market Authority – Click here

It starts off with a squeeze page and then leads you to the sales page. You will also get an automated follow-up sequence. The idea is the squeeze pages job is to squeeze you to leave your name and email if the item offered is of interest. If you leave your details then you will get added to an automated follow-up sequence which is further designed to teach you and add value so the user gets to know, like and trust you. The call to action on the emails is to upsell the user into purchasing the main product should it fit their needs. The product should help the user solve a problem.

What Types of Offers Should You Put in Your Funnel? 

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Everybody’s audience is different. You’ll have to do some planning and trial and error to discover what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the offers most commonly found.

The Core Offer

Your core offer is near the bottom of the funnel. It is usually your primary product/service and the reason why your offer funnel exists. It is often the purchase that’s just under the highest price point, but it doesn’t always have to be. 

Lead Magnet

Technically not inside the funnel, a lead magnet attracts prospects to the entry point of your funnel. It is a freebie that is offered in exchange for a person’s name and email address. Once you have this information, you can start marketing to them directly via email.  

Low-Ticket Offer

A low-ticket offer is usually found at the front end of your sales funnel. It is low-risk and won’t scare prospects away with its price tag. It primes your audience to purchase your core offer. Most importantly, it separates serious prospects from casual ones who just want your freebies. 

One-Time Offer 

A one-time offer (OTO) is a powerful way to qualify prospects early in your process. It can be a low-ticket item or even another freebie. What makes it so powerful is its exclusivity and time-sensitive nature: ‘Buy now before it’s gone forever’. It is another way to guide people to your core offer. 

Order Bump 

An order bump is located at the end of the offer, on the checkout page for your core offer. With a single click, customers can add a lower-ticket item to their cart before they press ‘Buy now’. Order bumps have a high conversion rate and increase the value of your core offer and point of sale revenue. 

Upsell

An upsell is a higher priced offer presented after your core offer. The right customers will appreciate an upsell that enhances their initial purchase. 

Downsell

A downsell is a lower-ticket offer that is presented to your prospect after they have turned down your core offer or even after your upsell. The hope is that, while the customer doesn’t want to pay for the initial offer, they may be interested in a less expensive alternative. It keeps people in your funnel since that downsell item may be just what those people are looking for. 

Why You Need a Variety of Offers 

Presenting prospects with a variety of offers as they progress through your offer funnel allows you to segment and better target your audience. If your audience is a mix of high-ticket purchasers, cautious and budget-conscious consumers, and ‘window shoppers’ looking for freebies, a good journey will offer something to all of them. 

The different types of offers and their placement in the funnel will direct audience members to the right offer at the right time. And it will eventually show them the door if none of the offers are right for them. 

Using different offer types will also allow you to maximize sales. Instead of just acquiring customers for your core offer, you can also present them with a lower-ticket item, upsell, or downsell. 

This process helps foster a relationship with your audience. As you present your audience with different offers, you will be communicating with them regularly. You will build trust and establish yourself as an expert, increasing the odds that people will purchase your core offer and future offers. 

The most important thing to remember is that the customer’s movement through the funnel isn’t necessarily in a straight line. It shouldn’t be viewed as a direct, ultrafast chute that drops them into your core offer. Instead, look at it as a flexible journey, or ‘choose your own adventure’, that’s directed by the decisions your prospects make. 

They may take you up on your downsell, but not your upsell. Or they may go directly to your core offer. Or they may purchase your low-ticket offer, but will need more information and content from your before they purchase a higher-ticket item. A fluid, flexible offer funnel will speak to all these people and lead them to the offer that’s right for them, resulting in more conversions and sales.

Why You Need a Sales Funnel of Offers

At first glance, building and mapping it out seems like a complicated process. You need to understand your audience, clearly define your core offer’s unique value proposition, and create a whole series of supporting offers and related communications before you even get to your core offer. 

It’s worth it.

A funnel of offers makes the process more efficient. 

No more…

• Constantly adjusting your core offer to appeal to different members of your audience
• Wasting time engaging with people who just want your free content
• Scrambling to create content and communications to promote your core offer
• Annoying your audience with communications they’re not interested in and driving them to unsubscribe 

Some of your audience members just want free stuff. They’ll enjoy your free content and offers, but they won’t buy – not even a low-ticket offer. By weeding out those who won’t buy, or automating the process, you won’t waste time engaging with them during the sales process. 

This is the primary benefit, but there are many others. 

Through your offers funnel, you can build a relationship with your audience instead of spamming them with unwanted content. The communications related to your offers will genuinely help prospects with their problems and they’ll come to see you as a trusted expert who provides value. This will increase the chances that they will eventually purchase your core offer and future offers. 

Finally, multiple offers helps you learn even more about your target audience. By choosing or rejecting offers, your prospects are giving you valuable information about their preferences and tastes. 

Their decisions also provide valuable input on the offer itself. If nobody takes you up on the offer, it may need to be adjusted. On the other hand, if you have great success with an offer, you can figure out why and replicate it. 

Why Your Funnels Leak—Sales Funnel Management

For a business owner with a solid funnel in place, it’s easy to take a look at the number of subscribers at each level of the funnel and predict pretty accurately what the sales are going to be from day to day or week to week. 

If you’ve got a funnel in place, though, and your numbers aren’t looking great, chances are you have a leak somewhere. Your funnel has a hole (or two or three) where subscribers are falling through. There are four common causes for funnel leaks, and once you spot them, they’re pretty easy to fix. 

Not enough traffic. The very heart of your funnel is the traffic you bring in. Without visitors to your blog or opt-in pages, you’ll have no subscribers. Without subscribers, you’ll have no (or very few) sales. Without sales, you’ll have no business. Yet this is where a lot of people struggle. How can you get more eyes on your content and more subscribers into your funnel? 

How to fix it: Traffic generation is an entire industry of its own, but here are some tips: Use good SEO to encourage search engines to rank your content well. Be present and active in the places where your ideal reader hangs out, whether that’s on social media, in niche forums, or at live events. Use paid ads to drive targeted traffic to highly relevant pages. Recruit JV partners and affiliates to promote your offers. Buy solo ads in related email newsletters. 

No follow-up. This is a leaky funnel mistake that a lot of new entrepreneurs make. They spend a lot of time and energy setting up a great squeeze page and driving traffic to it, then they deliver the goods to their subscribers, and then…nothing. No follow-up emails. No offers to buy more. No related services or products. Nothing. 

How to fix it: Before you spend time building that opt-in page or offer, be sure you have a back-end product to promote, or those subscribers you so carefully collected will end up costing you money instead of earning it back.

No call-to-action. This happens most typically at the top of the funnel. Your blog posts, social media content, podcasts, YouTube videos—everything you offer for free—must have some kind of call-to-action, or it’s all just wasted energy. Your call-to-action can be as simple as “Subscribe to my YouTube channel” or “Follow me on Facebook for more tips,” but it must be there. 

How to fix it: Every time you write a blog post or an email, as yourself, “What do I want my readers to do when they’re done reading/listening/watching this?” That becomes your call to action. 

No product offers. When you’re just starting out, this can be a problem. You know you need to be building a mailing list, but with nothing to offer them, what’s the point? The truth is, there are lots of ways to make money in your funnel even if you don’t have a product to sell. 

How to fix it: Promote affiliate offers. No matter what industry you’re in, there are a variety of tools and products your readers need. Find those tools, sign up for the affiliate programs, and recommend them to your readers. Not only will your readers thank you for pointing them in the right direction, but you’ll earn a little cash, too. 

Got a leaky funnel? With a few tweaks and some attention paid to your follow-up sequences, chances are you can fix those holes and increase your profits in no time. 

Speak to sales funnel consultants. If you reach out to a sales funnel consultant or digital strategist you can gain some insights from someone with expiernce.

The Keys to Success

Know Your Audience

The key to a successful funnel of offers is to know your audience. Conduct research and create an ideal customer profile. This will allow you to identify the unique challenges and problems your audience faces and solve them through you offers. If you create tangible results and quick wins for your audience, the more likely they are to buy your core offer and future offers. 

Find out more about How To Create Your Ideal Customer Profile here

Focus on Your Free Lead Magnet.

Your lead magnet is what drives people to the entry point of your funnel. It is your most important offer, so make it good. It should provide value and solve a specific problem your audience has identified. Pay special attention to creating content that will support this lead magnet and driving traffic to it. Nobody will opt-in to your lead magnet if they can’t find it. 

Know the Stages of Your Offer Funnel.

Prospects move through different stages of awareness and openness to purchase as they progress through your funnel. It is critical to present them with the right offer at the right time. For example, the chances of convincing them to purchase a high-ticket item the second they enter your funnel are very low. You first need to cultivate a relationship. 

The first stages of the journey are awareness (before they enter the funnel) and then interest (after they’ve opted in). Prospects are just starting learn about you and your offerings. The offer at the interest stage should be low-risk, either a freebie or one-time offer that will gain their trust and move them further down the funnel. 

In the middle of the funnel, prospects are at the evaluation and engagement stages. They’re consuming your content and starting to seriously consider what you have to offer. You can present them with a low-ticket offer or even a subscription. 

Later in the funnel, in the commitment stage, prospects have been convinced of your value and are ready to buy. Present them with your core offer, and later an upsell or downsell offer. 

Learn these stages so you’re making the right offer, at the right time. And remember, the stages aren’t necessarily linear. Some prospects may get all the way down to the engagement stage and then decide they need more information, returning to the evaluation stage. 

Longer Doesn’t Mean Better.

Your offer funnel doesn’t need to be long and complex. You just need enough offers to qualify your prospects and lead them to your core offer. Assess your customers’ needs and the types of offers you’re capable of making.

Don’t Despair When People Leave.

Don’t feel disappointed when people leave your offer funnel. That’s supposed to happen! They’re sending you valuable feedback that your offers aren’t for them. 

The Core Offer Isn’t the End.

If you really want to make the most of your offer funnel, keep engaging with people long after they buy your core offer. Lead them to other offers and funnels. You’ve done a great deal of work to capture and nurture this lead, so don’t let them go.

3 Pages Every Funnel Must Have—And What To Include On Them!

The stages of a sales funnel may be confusing on how exactly these work. In fact, that’s the number one reason small business owners say they can’t get their funnels set up—they simply don’t know what to include where. This can also be used for consultant sales funnels.

Here’s the easy answer: At the very least, your setup needs three pages. 

Sales Page

This one obviously comes first. You might call it a landing page, or in the case of a free opt-in, a squeeze page. It serves one purpose—to get the reader to take action. Whether that’s to buy a product or offer up their email address in exchange for a free gift, this is the gateway into your funnel. Everything that follows depends on this page, so you want to be sure you:

Include a clear call to action—“Buy Now” or “Click here to download this report for free”

Eliminate distractions—that means no links to other websites or even a navigation bar

Address the readers’ pain points and how your offer provides the solution

Confirmation Page

Here’s where we ask the reader to confirm their intent. This confirmation page might actually be your checkout page. It’s where they enter their payment details. For a free offer, it’s simply the page your email management system directs them to next. It’s a  holding page, if you will, while you wait for them to confirm their email address. 

If you’re setting up a free funnel, this page has great power—and you don’t want to waste it! 

Here is where you can offer an upset, remind people to follow you on social media, and give them a peak at your other products and services. 

Remember, though, that they will only see this page once, so don’t put anything here that they will need to refer back to. That’s what the thank you page is for. 

Thank You Page

This is where they actually collect their downloadable item, or get information about how your product will be delivered. 

Like the confirmation page, this is valuable real estate, so you want to be sure you use it wisely. In addition to the downloadable item your customer just purchased (or opted in for) you also want to showcase your other offers—especially those at a slightly higher price point. Here’s why: the person looking at this page is a hot prospect. He or she is in a buying mood. You want to be sure to take advantage of that by putting your most relevant offers on this page. To encourage buying, consider including:

A limited time offer—scarcity sells, so if you can legitimately limit sales to a few hours/days or number of units, then this is the place to do so. 

A “no brainer” coupon offer—an insider’s only deal can be a powerful motivator, especially if it’s a fantastic price. 

Extra bonuses—give them access to additional products/services if they buy through your link on that page. These should be bonuses that aren’t advertised on the public sales page for that product. Again—insider’s deals are motivating!

Putting together a funnel isn’t complicated—or at least it doesn’t have to be. As your business grows and you have more products to offer, you can expand your funnel to include more upsells and downsells, but for now, this simple setup is really all you need. 

Putting Your Sales on Autopilot With a Follow-Up Sequence

The web pages that make up your sales or opt-in funnel are only the beginning. To truly encourage sales, you need to stay in contact with your readers. The easiest way to do that is through your email manager, by sending periodic emails with various related offers. 

Let’s take a look at a typical follow-up sequence for a free opt-in series. In this case, your reader has attended a free webinar that promoted a high-ticket training program. In the days that follow, you’ll want to stay in contact with an autoresponder sequence that automatically sends email at specific intervals. 

Email 1: This is going to be the first email that goes out after they confirm. It should give the reader access to your free webinar, so that can be a link to the replay, or that instructions to join you for the live event. You will likely also want to include a couple of reminder emails if they event is live. 

Email 2: This is the replay email for a live event, or the first follow-up if the original was a replay. In this email, it’s a good idea to offer few bullet points of what they learned, encouragement to watch the replay (if you can legitimately say it’s only available for the next XX days, even better), plus an offer to purchase the training program. 

Email 3: A few days later, you’ll want to follow-up again. This time, consider including a case study of someone who used your training program. When combined with a great offer, reading about the results someone else achieved can be a powerful motivator. 

Email 4: Use this follow-up message to remind readers that the replay is going away (if it is), and also to answer any objections. For example, you might list some FAQs or even questions you’ve received about your refund policy, who the program is for, or payment options. Remind them about the offer. 

Email 5: This is your final reminder that the offer is going away soon. At this point, you may want to encourage the reader to email you with questions (if you have the systems in place to manage a lot of email, that is). 

Email 6 and beyond: If your reader reaches this point without buying, then it may be that your product is just not right for her. From this point forward, you should continue to stay in contact by offering great information, case studies, tips and other interesting content, but also to offer other products that might be of interest. 

One important thing to remember about this email sequence: if your reader buys your program at any point, you must remove her from this sequence. It will make no sense for her to get email #5 with that final offer reminder if she purchased your program after email #3. Most autoresponder services, such as Active Campaign, have automation built in that allows you to move subscribers from one list to another based on their actions, so be sure to set that up as you’re building your funnel emails. 

This kind of hand’s off approach to email marketing is what will help you build a true passive sales funnel, so look for opportunities to use this system as you build your business. 

Top Tools for Creating a Sales Funnel

Are you Ready to find out more about how to create a sales funnel? There are just a few things you need before you can get started. Here are some of the most popular options when it comes to putting together both free and paid funnels:

Click Funnels —when it comes to building opt-in pages, click funnels is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. They’ve tracked and tested a variety of page styles to determine which ones convert best, and they make it easy for you to build similar pages for your funnel. 

It does come with a monthly fee, though, so before investing, you’ll want to be sure you can recoup your investment. 

Thrive Cart – Easily sell digital products from your site

Sam Cart – 1 click check out pages

Kartra – Everything system you need in one place.

Groove Funnels – Funnel builder

Thrive Themes— Thrive themes is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to create your own funnels. It includes several funnel templates and a drag-and-drop page builder that makes it easy to get just the look you want. 

Active Campaign —Probably the easiest email manager on the market today, Active Campaign is the choice for many small business owners, not only because it’s simple to use, but because it’s also economical. Active Campaign offers both autoresponders and broadcast emails, list automation, and segmenting, so you can send emails exactly when—and to whom—you want. 

Easy digital downloads – Easily sell digital product from your site

PayPal—The simplest of all payment processors, PayPal allows you to take payments online for a very reasonable fee. It will also act as a simple shopping cart. 

Stripe – easy way to take credit card payments

You can see that you have a lot of options when it comes to building out your pages, but what are the must-have items? At the most basic level, you must have:

A way to create web pages. A simple WordPress website will fill this need, with a little bit of work. Click funnels or Kartra are nice to have, but not essential, especially if you’re just getting started. 

A way to capture email addresses. Active Campaign is definitely the top choice here, but others include Awebber, MailChimp, Constant Contact, and iContact. 

A shopping cart. PayPal is as easy as it gets when it comes to shopping carts, but other options include 1 Shopping Cart, Woo Commerce, Infusionsoft, and aMember. 

I recommend you start small. Build the funnel framework as simply as you can, using tools that don’t cost a fortune. Once you have a few funnels up and running, you will be able to see where they can use improvement, and how the tools available to you can help make your funnels convert better and work more efficiently. 

Why Your Upsells Aren’t Converting Well – Do you have a Leaky Sales Funnel?

(And why you may be pissing off your customers, too)

No doubt you’ve seen plenty of upsells yourself, especially in the make-money niche.

You’ve seen good methods and bad. Maybe you’ve even gotten aggravated at the whole upsell process you had to go through to get your product.

And maybe you’ve even had customers complain to you about your upsells. (Hopefully not.)

Here’s why upsells are so tricky – they can seem a bit… and let’s be honest here…

DEVIOUS.

“Buy my product and you can get XYZ benefit!”

They buy your product and you say, “Whoopsie, if you REALLY want to get XYZ benefit, then you also need to purchase this second product.”

And the third, and the fourth…

This is why some people ask ahead of time if there are any upsells.

They’ve had too many experiences where the product seller held something back from the first product in order to make more money by selling a second product.

It’s like selling someone a car, and then saying, “Wait, if you REALLY want to drive this thing, you might want to purchase a steering wheel, too.”

They purchase the steering wheel, expecting to now get their car, except you say, “Wait, if you REALLY want to drive this thing any distance at all, you might want to buy tires, too, because driving on the rims is slow and hazardous.”

And on and on.

Your upsell needs a REASON to exist beyond you making more money – a reason your seller understands and appreciates.

Building a plug-in and purposely holding back features so they buy the upgrade is not a good reason from the buyer’s point of view (it might be a good reason from your point of view, but that’s another matter.)

Your initial offer has got to be able to stand on its own two feet all by itself, without the help of any upgrades whatsoever. It’s got to give the customer everything they need to get the benefit they seek (the reason they bought the product in the first place.)

The question is, what are “good reasons?”

How about…

Your product provides the benefit, but only with a lot of work. Your upgrade is something that makes the entire process easier.

For example, the initial product teaches how to do something by hand, the upsell is software that automates the process.

Or…

Your product provides one method of achieving the benefit, and your upgrade provides more (different) methods of achieving the same result.

For example, your initial product teaches one traffic generation method, and your upsell is a monthly membership in which they get a new traffic generation method each week.

Or…

Your product provides a benefit and your upsell is something that complements that benefit.

For example, your initial product is how to convince blog owners to let you guest blog post, and your upsell is how to convert the traffic from guest blog posts into paying customers.

Be careful with this last one. If you go on and on in your initial offer about how you can convert this traffic to sales, then your customers might expect that information to be in the initial product.

Now then, I’d like to propose a slightly different, calmer and more gentle method of upselling.

Instead of inserting a, “Do not pass until you read this” type of upsell into your sales funnel, you try doing all of the following:

• Suggesting they check the offer out on your download page
• Suggesting they check it out again inside your product
• And then following up with a series of emails letting them know why it’s such a great idea to get this upsell this week

And I say “this week,” because you’ll want to offer them a special price that is only good for the first few days after their initial purchase.

I know of one marketer who uses ONLY this method of upsell. Yes, he does not make as much money on his initial sales, but he does sell a boatload of upsells.

And perhaps more importantly, his customers never get angry at him for ramming upsells down their throats. They love him, trust him, and a surprising number do get the upsell before the discount expires.

This is something you might test. Of course, the thing that’s difficult to know is how much goodwill this builds and how much of that goodwill converts into later sales down the road.

Remember, your upsell needs a reason to exist – a reason beyond you making a profit.

When you get some time do check out the Digital S.I.M.AC Method™. It’s a complete step by step blue print which shows you exactly what to do and when to do it so you can get success in your online business. Check out the Authority Dojo to find out more.

Should You Ditch Your Funnel?

More and more businesses are ditching the traditional funnel model and adopting a form of the Digital Rapport® approach. Digital Rapport® is a more organic and effective approach. But does this mean that you have to dump the sales funnel completely?

Not necessarily. A good way to think about it is that Digital Rapport® Marketing builds on the funnel concept, but takes it a step further.

Digital Rapport® Marketing Explained

First, let’s compare the two models. The funnel is a model that brings leads into your orbit through a wide mouth, and then allows you to qualify leads as they move through. At each step along the way, you make offers and gradually weed out people who won’t buy.

Digital Rapport® Marketing is based completely on the customer experience. Its three stages are Connect, Influence, and Inspire, and it’s a cycle that can be repeated as many times as necessary. With this model, leads come into the cycle at any stage, so you can make the right offer to meet their needs when it’s right for them. 

The Advantages of Digital Rapport® Marketing

The reason Digital Rapport® Marketing approach is working well for businesses is that it meets the needs of a changing market. Today, people expect a more personal experience with the brands they buy from. They don’t just want offers thrown at them, they want to engage with you. Consumers expect a lot more from companies now than they did a few years ago, so you need to deliver on their expectations.

With a funnel, you lose people who aren’t interested in your offer. Unqualified leads are tossed away. Digital Rapport® Marketing works well because it maintains the relationship you have with your audience. The sale is just the beginning of the relationship. 

One weakness of the funnel process is that it doesn’t adapt well to changes. On the other hand, Digital Rapport® is flexible and adaptable. As long as you know your audience and your offerings, you can keep the cycle going.

When to Use a Sales Funnel

Digital Rapport® Marketing is more appropriate and efficient today, but this doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time mastering the funnel. Even if you make the switch, you should keep the old approach in your repertoire. Sometimes, it’ll come in handy.

One place you might use a funnel is for a one-time promotion. In this case, you’re not concerned with creating a long-term relationship. What you need is to blast out your message and attract the right people to your offer. 

A funnel is useful because it’s simple. It can be used to gather market information. Since it weeds out leads through successive offers, you can use it to gain data about your audience by seeing which offers or messages work.

The funnel can still be useful, but if you’re not on board with Digital Rapport® Marketing, you need to be. It’s a highly effective approach for building long-term relationships and turning your customers into lifetime advocates. 

Want to learn more about how Digital Rapport® can increase your income? Head over here

What is a sales funnel consultant?

A sales funnel consultant is a professional who helps businesses to improve their sales funnel and make it more profitable. A sales funnel consultant can help you to identify any leaks in your funnel, optimize your conversion rates, and track your progress over time. Sales funnel consultants are professionals who help businesses improve their sales funnel and make it more profitable. Sales funnel consultants can help you to identify any leaks in your funnel, optimize your conversion rates, and track your progress over time.

Jatinder Palaha

Digital Business Coach | Web Revenue Strategist | Award-Winning IT Consultant | Author 

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