As a business owner, you’re no stranger to funnels.
In fact, you’ve been through countless of them by now.
This means I don’t have to tell you the power of them because you’re already experiencing it, on the consumer side.
Sales funnels are making you more aware of others out there who can solve a problem for you and you’re buying from them as a result.
Even better?
It’s all automated which means the business owner you’re buying from isn’t having to manually send emails, host discovery calls or be “on” 24/7 to make that sale.
It’s also why you’re now looking to implement sales funnels in your own business, so that you can amplify your sales, without amplifying your work hours.
Which leads to the question… is your business ready for a sales funnel?
This week, we’re going through the top three things to have in place before creating your first (or next) sales funnel.
This will allow you to strategically check off the boxes and know that you’re going into this next level of business with everything you need for it to be profitable and effective for YOU.
Has the Offer Within Your Sales Funnel Been Validated?
If you take anything away from this blog, let it be this… a sales funnel will never fix a broken offer. (Need help with your offer? Check out: My Course Isn’t Selling… What Gives?)
When it comes to building a sales funnel, there’s no getting around the fact that there’s a good amount of upfront work needed in order to get the results you want.
From the emails you’re writing to the sales pages you’re creating and the tech that’s involved in being it all together, there is time, money and energy involved for either yourself or the members of your team.
And I’ll go ahead and take a guess here that you’ll want that work you’re putting in to be worth it, right? To pay for itself over and over again?
The easiest way to do this is to make sure the offer(s) within the sales funnel you created has been validated before getting started.
Validation happens through sales.
This could be through a beta launch, a live launch and/or social promotional period. Essentially, people have already said YES to your offer and you’re utilizing the power of a sales funnel to amplify that.
No, you don’t have to have hundreds or thousands of sales on this offer before putting it into a sales funnel, but you do want to have enough that show people are looking for, and willing to buy, that specific offer.
It also makes creating your sales funnel a heck of a lot easier as you already know what gets people to purchase from you.
For example, if you see that a majority of conversions for the offer you’re selling happened from a certain three emails, you now know what emails to put in your sales funnel. On the reverse side, if you know a certain email you sent tanked sales, you now know not to bring that into your funnel as we don’t want to amplify and automate what isn’t working.
Like I said, putting together everything does take time, money and energy. So, why not make it as easy as possible to get that work done by already having these sales validated being able to pull from those metrics and double down on what’s working?
Passed the test? Let’s continue on!
Does Your Sales Funnel Have a Traffic Plan?
Your offer has been selling and you know you want to move forward with amplifying them with a sales funnel, great!
Now, we want to make sure that you aren’t building out this entire sales funnel, without anyone seeing it. Yep, we’re talking about making sure you have enough leads on the front end.
Having this plan in place ahead of time is going to save you from wasted time and frustration.
When I support business owners inside my 1:1 Strategize + Rise Intensives, we talk a lot about traffic because it’s different for every business. Every business has different goals, audiences, and offers. However, here are the three main traffic categories you would be looking at:
- Organic Traffic: This will involve leveraging the power of social media, SEO, podcast interviews and/or guest blogging. Many will lead you to believe that business is all “pay to play” but the fact that you’re here right now proves otherwise, doesn’t it? Organic still works when used correctly.
- Paid Traffic: Because you’ve already made sales, you can take a percentage of those sales that you’ve made from this offer, and put it into paid traffic. As your sales increase, you can take that percentage and to keep fueling additional paid traffic as you scale. This can be in the form of Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok or Google ads.
- Both: If you’re in the position to do paid traffic then I always suggest doing both because why not take advantage of organic as much as paid? This is what we do here at Freedom Driven Success.
Having a built out funnel, without a plan for how you will generate consistent traffic is slow and agonizing.
How so? Because you’re left sitting there with a huge asset on your hands that you have to wait (and wait and wait) on because there aren’t enough people coming through to either make changes and/or scale it. I talk more about this here: How to Find (and Fix) the Leaks in Your Sales Funnel.
Know your traffic numbers, plan for them and take actions that support it.
You and your funnel will be happier for it!
Do You Have a Marathon Mindset with Your Sales Funnel?
Yes, sales funnels are amazing when everything is and running as planned.
They are what has brought freedom into my own business and life, so of course I am pro evergreen funnel or I wouldn’t be talking about this right now.
However, even with all the experience in the world, a highly profitable sales funnel doesn’t come together overnight.
This is where the marathon mentality comes in as you begin thinking differently about what’s in front of you.
It’s all data and a marathon mindset makes decisions based on data, not drama. I talk more about what data you’re looking for here: How to Find (and Fix) the Leaks in Your Sales Funnel.
Need an example? My very first profitable funnel took six months of testing and tweaking to get it to where I wanted it to be.
Six months.
Does it take me that long now? No. But we all start somewhere and it still takes me a few months, even at this point.
Regardless, those six months I put in continue to pay off for me for years after as the funnel I’m talking about is STILL running.
Business is a marathon.
Your sales funnel is no exception.