The sales funnel a visualization where the potential prospect is on their buyer journey in the sales pipeline. It allows you to forecast sales, improve lead generation, and it helps you with sales goals. 

The first step of building a sales funnel is to outline your company's sales process and break it into stages. The stages can represent any phases of the buying journey, such as lead nurturing, brand awareness, offers, or decisions.

It will help you define the key activities required to move a lead from one stage to the next. This blog post will show you effective practices to build a sales funnel for your business and sample funnels for different types of businesses.

What Is a Sales Funnel?

Companies use a sales funnel to describe buyers' steps before purchasing a product or service. People often use this idea to illustrate a buyer's path through the process. Sales funnels help sales reps identify the buying process and provide insight into customer needs. They are used to convert leads into paying customers.

Your potential buyers go through the specific stages to determine where to buy a product or service from you. These sales funnels give a virtual representation of the customer journey.  In general, the sales funnel is similar to the marketing funnel. It is widest on the top and later narrows at the bottom. It represents how the prospective leads are gradually filtered into qualified leads and converted into paying customers and their progress over the buyer's journey. 

Sales funnels are a crucial element of business because they show where they need to focus their efforts on the sales pipeline. For instance,  if the lead doesn't meet the ideal customer persona, then the sales reps can identify it early in the sales cycle. They can avoid selling to the unqualified lead and start prioritizing the qualified leads who are interested in your product/service and can convert quickly through building communication.

Although there are three different levels in a funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU), the steps to optimize your sales funnel stages and generate revenue vary depending on your business type. Each business will have different steps to go through, depending on its sales cycle. We shall look into some sales funnel templates you can optimize according to your ideal customer journey. 

Basic B2B Sales Funnel Structure

The b2b sales funnel consists of three stages: top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. 

Top of the funnel (TOFU)

It is the widest section of the sales funnel. It contains both types of leads: leads who have already contacted your brand & showed some interest in your product or service and leads who have not interacted with your company. 

This stage aims to create awareness about your brand's product offering. At the top of the funnel, there is no demand or interest. Your sales team's mission is to create both the demand and interest for your product among the targeted audience. 

When you reach out to your targeted audience, you start arousing the customer's interest. Sales reps nurture the ideal customer and need to drive them to the middle of the funnel.

Writing blogs, posting on social media channels, and starting conversations with potential customers. The process aims to engage the potential buyers, build a relationship, and dive them to the middle of the funnel. 

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The qualified leads are searching for solutions to their identified problems at this stage.  It is the consideration state where the lead analyzes how your product/service can fit their needs. 

At this funnel, some of them will be marketing qualified leads, and these leads are the individuals who have shown interest in your marketing activity and are not ready for a sales pitch yet. 

Some leads on the funnel will be sales-qualified leads who are actively looking for a solution to their problem and are ready to make a purchase. With little effort, the sales team can convert these sales-qualified leads into paying customers. 

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

After all the hard work, you will have the prospective ideal customer at the bottom of the funnel. It's your priority to get them to choose you as the best service provider for their needs. The more they engage with you and your solution, the more likely they are going to purchase it. 

At the bottom of the funnel, your product will become an opportunity among qualified leads with more chances of buying your solution. At this stage, the potential customer makes their purchase decision. At this stage, you have offered values and built trust among the ideal customer and have to convert them into a customer. 

Sales Funnel vs. Marketing Funnel

The sales funnel, and the email marketing funnel have many similarities. Both are involved in completing the sales deal. For the sales funnel process, the marketing funnel is the internal part. In general, the B2B sales process has been linear. Marketing generally introduces the potential customer to a company before sales reps introduce them. The sales funnel is an extension of the marketing funnel.

A marketing funnel designed to educate your leads about your brand by introducing and sharing the benefits of your product. Identifying the best interest lead on your product is taken to the next step by the sales reps. Here, the sales funnel begins after the continuation of the marketing funnel.

Many Businesses have started using a new approach called smarketing, which focuses on aligning the efforts of both marketing and sales teams to ensure the sales process ends closer and wins the deal. This blog post will discuss optimizing your sales and marketing process using a sales funnel.

Why are sales funnels important for B2B businesses?

According to research, only  10-15% of leads are paying customers. An effective sales funnel is vital to growing the percentage of spending customers and conversion. We shall look into some of the major benefits of the sales funnel. 

Improves Productivity

All the prospects on the email list will not be ready to make a purchase. Through the lead qualifying process, your business can find the ideal customer, and the sales team can focus on the high-priority lead rather than unqualified leads. Which will improve the overall productivity and increase sales conversion. 

Better Forecasting

By monitoring the sales funnel stages, you can predict sales success. Monitor the prospect's actions at each funnel level to see how they interact. It gives a company an understanding of how many leads they need to generate sales. 

Stronger Client Relationship

The right sales funnel helps increase your sales by figuring out what is preventing leads from moving onto the next stage, what they are dissatisfied with, and finding ways of strengthening your relationships.

Insights on product development improvement 

Knowing the potential prospect's expectations on each sales funnel stage will give a clear insight into where your business needs improvement. Utilizing a proven sales funnel gives you a clearer vision of how to improve your service or product.

Higher Return on Investment (ROI)

In addition to the many benefits mentioned above, you can use your sales funnels to increase your ROI and resell your product. No doubt, businesses need to focus on sales funnels to improve their sales.

Must Try Sales Funnel Templates To Boost Your Conversions

Check out the top templates to help with your sales and marketing campaigns. Use them as a reliable source in building your sales funnel.

1. SaaS Sales Funnel Template 

‍

By creating a SaaS product, you're opening the door for a range of lead opportunities. Usually, for SaaS product sales, the prospect wants to know your product and how it works for them completely to drive them to the closing of the sale. You can do this in two ways: product demo or free trial.

Saas sales funnel involves various stages such as awareness, interest, product demo, business proposal, consideration, purchasing decision, and client renewal. The SaaS sales funnel will have many steps as the customer will often need research and time to make a purchase decision. It is the subscription-based approach. In SaaS, product sales activities will require new purchasing and retaining current customers.

Product Awareness: In this stage, your business needs to create awareness about your SaaS product among the potential buyer via online ads, marketing emails, cold calls, content marketing, and more. For instance, your visitors will come to the site and become leads.

Learning Product Features: Focus on lead qualification and nurturing activities through phone calls and email marketing. The interested leads want to learn about the features of your SaaS product. Ideal customers can check out your product features by signing up for a free trial. 

Product Demo: The demonstration of your SaaS product features shows how your product interface looks, how it functions, what prospects can accomplish with these products, etc. 

Business Proposal: The prospect is excited by your product and wants more information. After the prospects show interest in product features, they are driven into the phase of sharing price information and service terms with your potential customer.

Consideration: The prospect is weighing their options and may also seek to negotiate prices or terms with you. In this stage, the prospect will decide whether to purchase and may also explore offers from other brands and seek negotiation on the pricing. 

Purchasing Decision: After the consideration and negotiation, Prospects have three options when engaging with your company:

• Subscribe to our SaaS product(s).
• Select a different option.
• Not purchase any Saas product at this time.

Once a prospect subscribes to a plan, onboarding and payment transaction activities will be executed. If the prospect is not ready for purchase this time, then it's an opportunity to follow up with the customer for future conversion.

Client Renewal: When a current customer renews their subscription or upgrades to a better plan, it indicates the customer is happy with the offering you have provided them in the past. At this stage, the customer seeks a better plan & price to renew their subscription or upgrades. So there are more changes in reaching customer support for information about the new offerings.

2. Product Launch Sales Funnel Template 

This sales funnel template is suitable for two situations 1. To catch a customer’s attention who has not expressed their interest. 2. The current customer makes more purchases. This can be achieved by offering a monthly subscription with the offer, a free demo, offering a free trial, and more. 

After your customers make their first small purchase or use your product on the free trial, the sales team needs to take up the upselling opportunities with these customers. You should do this by providing them with an irrefutable proposal, like a discounted price, and explaining how much they are saving.

For upselling, if your budget is limited to paid advertisement, there are other ways you can increase your visibility. Your business can use the product landing page, email campaigns, website landing page, or social media platforms as alternatives to paid advertising. 

3. Lead Magnet Sales Funnel Template

Generating quality leads is the most crucial part of the sales funnel. Your business can capture the inbound leads with the lead magnet sales funnel template. 

First, your business needs to give your website visitors something for free. For example, offering a case study, a whitepaper, an ebook, or a detailed industry report in return for the inbound quality lead contact information. 

After the visitor submits their email address, the sales & marketing need to send the thank you email with the promised freebie. You can build a quality prospect lead list through the lead magnet and begin your nurturing process by sharing relevant content and compelling offers. 

SmartLead is an easy-to-use automated email sequence software that can set up email sequences with personalized messages at a specific time or on customer-based action triggers. The software will help you keep your inbox clutter-free by sending targeted follow-ups for leads who haven't yet responded.

4. Live Demo Sales Funnel Template

You can use this funnel template to show off your product's features more engagingly.  Consider that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from brands they love, and not coincidentally, 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool. This live demo sales funnel template helps businesses to sell products by adding demo videos of your product on your website. Create live demo videos with Q&A sessions demonstrating how it works and link them to the subscription page.  Then, for those who have watched the videos until the end, offer the visitors a limited-time offer to convert them.  

5. Webinar Sales Funnel Template

Webinars are a great method to generate more new quality leads. The best part is that it's a very efficient way to do this. The website visitor will sign up for a webinar by filling out the contact form on the landing page, and the visitor will provide their contact information. 

After that, the sales team will automatically send a confirmation email with a thank you message for showing interest in the webinar. 

You can take advantage of the different time-triggered functions on automation software like SmartLead to send webinar confirmations and reminders ahead of time.

In your email, include a CTA for your product for the webinar attendees to check out. This will help the subscriber to see how you can help them, and so are less likely to resist your product offerings.  If you're wondering how to create webinar invitations that will boost your ROI. 

Actionable Tips For Creating A High-Converting Sales Funnel

You can build a sales funnel like a pro using the following tips. These best practices will help you create your sales funnel faster and more confidently.

Know Your Ideal Potential Customer

The goal of marketing is to convert prospects into buyers. But how do you know whether your target audience is ready to buy? You can start by analyzing your existing customers and creating an ideal customer profile. 

It helps you define the personas of your ideal customers based on demographics and behaviors. Once you've defined your ideal customer profiles, It's time to list the features, values, and interests for each persona. This allows you to build a stronger understanding of your current customers and better align your messaging and offers with their individual preferences.

Personalize Your Customer's Journey

The most important thing about personalizing marketing is that it gives you control over how prospects interact with your brand. You can make sure that every touchpoint is relevant to the person. This helps you connect with a specific audience and deliver the right information at the right moment.

You can use personalized emails, landing pages, social media posts, ads, and more. However, if you send too many messages, people might feel like they're being bombarded with irrelevant messages. And if you don't provide enough value, you won't gain trust.

Drive Traffic To Your Website

Startup companies that don't have large sums of money to spend on advertising should focus on how best to attract the attention of their potential target audience. SEO, blogging, and guest posting can drive more traffic to the site. 

In addition, you can use email marketing campaigns to increase your customer base. But remember that you won't be able to get someone to do something without giving him/her a reason to do it. So, you must provide value to your visitors. Otherwise, they'll simply move on to another site. This way, you can reach out to people interested in their products.

Engage Your Customers

The key to successful customer engagement is to make sure you are always looking for opportunities to engage your customers. This includes responding to social media posts to create educational content, such as blogs and tutorials. Doing this will build trust with your audience and encourage them to become repeat buyers.

Use Sales Automation Tools

The number of leads entering each stage will increase when your business grows. You may find it difficult to manage these sales funnels manually. It will be challenging, and your marketing and sales team will not have a clear direction or path for conversion outcomes. Automation can make your sales pipelines and conversion easier and more professional. Your business needs to find reliable sales automation software for the complex sales cycle. 

If you're looking for a powerful marketing and sales automation tool, then SmartLead AI is an ideal option that offers advanced outreach campaigns without compromising on quality. Make your outreach scalable with this automation software. You can now have unlimited auto-rotating email accounts without worrying about daily limits or reputation.

You'll be able to set up sequences that are natural to you and nurture conversations, no matter how many. You'll have all your messages in one centralized place for easy viewing and management. This AI-based solution tackles reputation issues and prevents your IP address from being blacklisted. You can completely control your inbox and simultaneously reply to up to 500 leads. Using this software, you connect with your prospects across different channels such as email, SMS, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Whatsapp and build relationships with them.  Sign up for the free trial and experience the difference today!

Bottom Line

A well-crafted sales funnel is necessary for any successful marketing or sales campaign. The templates we’ve provided can help you create your high-converting funnel. Remember, the most important part of creating a sales funnel is understanding your customer and what motivates them to buy. 

By understanding a sales funnel's basic structure and elements, you can create a high-converting funnel for your marketing and sales campaigns. We’ve provided some top funnel templates to help get you started, but remember that each business is unique and will require its individualized approach. Succeed using one of these top sales funnel templates.