A recent sales survey by LinkedIn reports sales representatives only spend 37.7% of their time selling. You might be thinking what are they doing for the rest of 62.3% of the time?
Well, they spend all this time on sales strategies. Without planning and strategizing you cannot successfully execute anything
This is exactly what a salesperson does. He invests his time in building strategies, and sales funnels, working on the sales pipeline, analyzing the stats according to the sales funnel, and finding loopholes that are making their sales take a nosedive.
So far, among all these steps, the first and most important step is building a sales funnel.
As a beginner in the sales industry, most people never realize the impact of the sales funnel, so they end up ignoring it. Eventually, their sales suffer, and they have no way to track the customer journey.
Just by investing 10% of your time in building a hard-core sales funnel, you can easily reduce your work to half.
The trick here is to know about your prospects and learn about them before they learn about your product or enter the awareness phase
This is where you will need LinkedIn.
By mastering the art of building a sales funnel on your LinkedIn, you will be able to reap countless benefits.
Your sales funnel helps you understand the customer journey and see where sales drop or where they pick a pace.
If you have this information, a good LinkedIn automation tool can help you skyrocket your sales automatically.
As a beginner now that you know the sales funnel is important, you might be wondering how to design one for your business.
Within this article we will take you on a journey that will transform you from a beginner in sales to a professional who knows:
- What are a sales funnel?
- Differentiate between sales funnel and sales pipeline
- the steps of the sales funnel
- How do a sales funnel help in detecting loopholes?
- How to convert your LinkedIn into a sales funnel to skyrocket your sales
First thing first, you need some basic information so let’s jump into the introduction phase of the sales funnel.
What Is a Sales Funnel?
As a beginner when you enter the sales industry you see people talking about the funnel.
No, not just sales funnel
You will see them talking about the marketing funnel, conversion funnel, lead generation funnel, and much more.
This gets more confusing if you add sales pipelines and strategies but that is the story for another time.
To simply explain everything, “sales funnel is a journey or routine tracker that helps the seller know about the path that a prospect has taken to make a purchase”.
What Is the Difference Between a Sales Funnel and A Sales Pipeline?
Now that you know what a sales funnel is, can you differentiate between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?
If you cannot differentiate yet, you are not the only one. More than 37% of marketers admit that they don’t know where to begin.
The terms sales funnel and sales pipeline are used interchangeably most of the time. However, experts say they are not the same.
Your sales pipeline is all about deals which means it is about the customer journey.
On the contrary, your sales funnel is all about leads and how your lead converts into a customer.
This means that with the help of a sales pipeline you will see the stages in sales that are taken by the salesperson to move the lead from start to finish. However, within the sales funnel your lead will cover the stages to becoming your customer. This includes four simple steps — awareness, interest, decision, and action.
You might also see some experts using consideration as the second phase of the sales funnel.
Now that you know the basics, let’s explore the stages of the sales funnel with the help of some examples.
Stages Of Sales Funnel
After understanding that the sales funnel is a way to visualize the journey of your “lead” converting into a “customer”. You also need to know about the four important milestones.
These milestones vary based on the business model and the method you chose. In some cases, people add one more stage which is called loyalty and persistence. However, the main idea stays the same.
We will only enlist the main four types of stages.
For the beginner, we will list down each stage with a simple example.
Attention Or Awareness
Attention is the first phase. This is usually considered the first time when your prospect learns about some problem in his life. He then starts to research the issue, look through the articles, know about the impact of the things, and give a name to the issues.
A simple example of this phase is that you are a sales representative trying to use LinkedIn for B2B sales. Where others have improved and shown significant results over time, you have struggled to keep your head above water.
Now that you know about the problem, what will you do next?
Interest Or Consideration Phase
After diagnosing your problem, you have already entered the consideration phase. This is the phase where you will learn about the solutions to your problem.
Let’s consider the example that we have quoted above. You know that you have a problem with LinkedIn sales. So, you will see different LinkedIn automation software that can improve your sales while keeping your efforts and time to a minimum.
With so many options at hand, what will you do next?
Decision Phase
This is the most critical phase because the prospect is aware of so many solutions, yet he needs the best solution. This is the phase where the long lists of possible solutions get reduced to just one.
Let’s say you have a list of seven different LinkedIn automation tools, but you need something reliable, affordable, easy to use yet untraceable.
What will you choose? A simple answer is to choose a cloud based LinkedIn automation tool like Linked Camp.
Action
This is the final step of the sales funnel where the user makes a transaction and gets converted into a customer. This process is also known as conversion which is the reason people call this conversion phase as well.
In short, you just successfully converted a prospect into a customer by using your sales funnel.
How Does a Sales Funnel Become a Loophole Detector?
We have learned about the stages, but these stages just give you information about the prospect journey. They do not help you improve your sales. You might be wondering what if you fail to make a sale?
If it is confusing, let’s see with the help of an example.
A friend is asking you to help them with sales generation for their B2B business. You look online and find a good LinkedIn automation tool to help.
You recommend the tool, and they start to research more about the LinkedIn automation tools.
Eventually, they learn about the features, ease, and the fact that the LinkedIn automation tool is untraceable. They decide about the purchase and act.
Easy right?
What if they never make a purchase?
Will you be able to tell what’s wrong without using a sales funnel?
Let’s see a scenario where you fail to make a purchase.
You want to help a salesperson with the sales journey, so you tell them to get a LinkedIn automation tool.
They feel it is a good idea, so they start looking at good LinkedIn automation tools available in the market. As they start to explore more, they learn that some of the LinkedIn automation tools are traceable, and they might restrict your LinkedIn features.
They drop the idea and look at other options.
As a seller, you get confused because you know that LinkedIn automation tools are the only way you can generate sales effortlessly for your B2B business, but you have failed to make a sale.
What went wrong? Can you guess?
Let’s break it down.
When you recommend a seller to get a LinkedIn automation tool, you have only helped them with the first phase or awareness phase.
The second phase is a consideration where the person will try to know everything in detail. The person of interest has not completed the journey because his research was incomplete.
What if they learn about cloud-based LinkedIn automation tools that are untraceable and still help you generate a plethora of sales without any extra effort. Will they make a purchase?
The answer is YES.
As a salesperson, the sales funnel offers you the control to detect all the loopholes that are causing you to lose your sales.
A simple solution to help you improve the sales in the above scenario is to focus on the consideration and awareness phase.
Once you know the issues, repairing those issues becomes easier.
How To Make a Sales Funnel?
This seems very easy. In fact, too good to be true.
If every phase in the sales funnel is so simple, why do more than 68% of companies never attempt to design a sales funnel?
A simple answer is that it is much more difficult to design a sales funnel than you think.
Do you want to become part of the remaining 42% who are using the sales funnel and making the most out of their sales?
Yes?
Let’s learn about the way you can build a sales funnel.
Look At Your Ideal Audience
As a B2B business, you need to know who your target is and who will be your person of interest. You must know the features that make an audience ideal for an outreach campaign and target.
This phase will help you become laser-focused on your target, making it easier for you to only target your ideal prospect.
Do you need to have in detail information about where your audience lands?
How much time do they take?
What is the bounce rate?
This data will help you build buyers’ persona and let you know if your site is good enough to handle the awareness phase of the sales funnel.
Learn To Attract Attention
As we mentioned earlier, just a simple mistake or incomplete information can make you lose your prospect.
Result? He will fall out of the sales funnel.
To grab the attention and build a strong awareness about the product or service, you need to educate your audience. This is the phase that will help you filter out the people that are interested in your business.
You need to look at your target audience and then lure them with attractive content.
Even for B2B LinkedIn marketing, you need to stay active and post daily content. Your content should consist of infographics, videos, gifs, webinars, and podcasts.
Strong Landing Pages
A good landing page is not just colorful and attractive, it is also informative and interactive. Since you know your consumers, you need to address their needs right away.
Even after getting on the landing page, don’t push for sales because your lead is still in the consideration phase.
Let them explore your product.
A strong landing page will automatically bring your customer to the decision phase.
Build Strong Campaign
At any phase, if your lead drops, you need to have a strong backup. Use an email retargeting campaign or a LinkedIn follow-up campaign to send them reminders.
You can take help from a good cloud-based Linkedin automation tool for a follow-up message campaign.
Even when you follow up, your campaign should not be about sales but about educating your customers.
Pushing your customers directly towards purchase means you are making them jump all the necessary steps. As a result, you will not be able to gain customer loyalty.
Ease The Access
As a seller, you need to stay accessible so your user can crawl up to you at any phase.
Blocking accessibility by just sending one message without follow-up means you are no longer active.
How To Build Sales Funnel on Linkedin
As a B2B business, your only priority is Linkedin.
If you use it wisely you will be generating 90% of your leads through LinkedIn lead generation.
Most businesses use content marketing and ads — both require a lot of money and constant monitoring. Their goal is to take the client back to the website for sales.
What if you can transform your LinkedIn page into a sales funnel? No website, no marketing tools, and no third-party app. Everything is just on your LinkedIn.
Why only LinkedIn?
Let’s admit when we think about social media marketing LinkedIn is not the first platform that comes to mind.
However, if you think about B2B marketing, you will instantly think about LinkedIn only.
Where B2B lead generation via other platforms can be distracting, LinkedIn offers you access to the best business from around the globe.
Everyone is already thinking about business, so you do not have to intentionally lure them into your sales funnel.
This is one of the reasons LinkedIn is known as a gold mine of B2B lead generation.
As you step into LinkedIn and you know you are going to design a sales funnel, you must know that your goal will not be just to lock the sales.
The goal is to get the customer talking so you can easily bring them from one-on-one interaction to making a purchase.
Step One — Account Setting
You need to have a LinkedIn account — simple right.
Now you need to adjust your LinkedIn account according to your business. If you are new, you need a killer LinkedIn profile.
After setting your profile, warm up with people.
If you have a good LinkedIn automation tool like linked camp, it will automatically put your account on the warm-up.
Step Two- Optimize Bio
Your bio truly defines your business. Even as a sales individual, if you want your LinkedIn profile to turn into a lead generation machine, focus on your bio.
Your bio or heading should address three important questions:
- What do you do — benefit-oriented only?
- What’s your target audience?
- What’s your product?
Once your customer gets everything at first glance this will have a powerful impact.
Step Three — Impeccable Summary
For an impeccable summary, keep your summary short. Do not get ahead of yourself when you write a summary.
If your summary stays within 4 to 5 sentences, it will have a good impact.
For the first two lines, write something that defines you and your product. This should only be educational for your prospect.
Step Four — Add Direct Links
Linkedin will become your landing page, but what if it can help you bring more traffic to your website?
This is very simple. You just need to add a link when you define your business.
You will see that more businesses will be interested in checking out your product.
Step Five — Offer A Benefit
If your business offers a free trial, freemium package, or free upgrade, offer a code or link on your LinkedIn.
Cloud based Linkedin automation tools like linked camp offer 14 days of free trial to help their customer know about their product.
Step Six — Add Testimonials
You might be thinking there is no space for that.
Well, when you write a summary, add testimonials by some of the best clients to your summary.
Wrap Up
Linkedin might be a little boring but if you are true to your business, there is no better place than LinkedIn. For a powerful sales funnel you need to keep four steps in your mind — awareness, consideration, decision, and purchase.
However, when you are trying to build a strong sales funnel, you can use a good LinkedIn automation tool like linked camp and a data scraping tool like linked sales navigator.
