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are you struggling to manage leads and close deals because if you are and you're not turning these leads into paying clients your business will fail you might not have heard of sales funnels but maybe you have and you're not sure if they work or how they work but let me tell you they definitely work with the right mindset in one of my first businesses was I understood the concept of sales funnels we're able to grow from selling to the restaurant down the street to be able to go and sell to Google Salesforce the US government and many other top brands and if you're locked me on I started I had no idea about sales never sold anything but when I studied and I understood the sales funnels I understood how people buy a company called deals and scale myself operations this is the complete guide that you need to learn the five stages of the sales funnel and also the specific actions you take at every stage and some Pro tips that you may not find elsewhere [Music] so what's a sales funnel is this process that encompasses every aspect of sales for money media stranger until they become a lead they'll become a paying client now when you're engaging with leads think of it as a relationship just like when you meet someone you don't ask them for a date you don't propose to them the first time you meet them in sales is the same way you first want to understand their needs you want to understand what they're looking for and then get them through this process one step at a time this is what you refer to as lead nurturing because the sales funnel is complex and not linear we demonstrate it through a funnel this helps us understand that concerns the fears the hesitations the lead may have from the point they meet you till they're ready to buy from you in one of the surveys I read 68 of the companies have not identified nor attempted to measure the sales funnel and the same survey showed that 79 of marketing leads never turn into sales I want to help you master the science and art of sales funnels and be able to be on The Winning Side of those statistics and make sure you download the sales guide that we produce for this video you can find the link below the five stages of a sales funnels are awareness education evaluation negotiation and sale closing the deal so let's look at the first and broader stage in a sales funnel awareness see when you have marketing activities you want to a conference you walk in the exhibit hall maybe you're going to a networking event you're meeting strangers or maybe you're running ads it doesn't matter those activities generate leads those leads now need to be nurtured so what do we do we want to broaden we want to deepen that relationship between us and the lead so basically in this stage the lead is becoming more aware of you your company your service and you're becoming more aware of the lead and what they need and if there's no alignment and the lead does not feel understood you are not going to gain their confidence and they're not going to buy from you I want to give you an example where I was deleted I was the client years ago my father moved from out of state to be closer to us we soon realized that he needed some medical help especially at night I searched online and I found that there's something called in-house medical care that's exactly what we wanted I reached out to three websites two of the three businesses I had reached out to did a really good job in getting back to me and in addition they followed up with an email answering the questions I asked on the phone providing some more details and this is a good tip for the service provider out there for you the entrepreneur is to make sure your website has adequate information current information useful information so when leads come your way they can be educated they can learn about the services and this could make or break this this deal it's also important to recognize that the sales funnel is just a framework so adapt the framework the sales funnel framework to the lead not the other way around so must review the steps and the actions you should take in this phase of awareness number one is make sure you respond in a very timely manner to your leads make sure you get a hold of them you speak with on the phone you schedule a zoom call you get it in person whatever the case might be but be very close to them respond to them very quickly number two provide educational material now the material could be in a number of formats it could be a blog post it could be a short video it could be a white paper so basically provide any educational material and answer any question they have so they have full knowledge of your services of your company credentials and they have trust to do business with you the most important outcome of this awareness phase is the queue as a service provider as a salesperson as a business owner you understand how qualified this lead is now what do I mean well maybe they told you that they don't have a budget or maybe they're not ready to buy now or maybe they're not responding to at all all these are indicators that this lead is not ready to buy you can you can tag them as cold leads and move on now whether the lead is called whether it is hot at the end of the day it's really important to document everything you're knowing about this lead in your CRM whatever that CRM is but make sure you document it and you identify next action steps I don't think you can scale your sales operations unless you invest and Implement a CRM now initially if you have less than say 50 leads your spreadsheet might be your friendly CRM but as you grow the business as you have more leads you need to have a place to manage these leads as we're talking about the sales funnel and as we go from one stage of awareness to education to other phases you gotta document all of that information about the lead what you send them what to follow up when to follow up all these actions have to be documented if you don't do that trust me you're gonna forget and you'll end up not closing these leads and you end up losing revenue and not scaling your business another note about the crms is that they're customizable so use that to your advantage if your sales cycle is shorter maybe you want to compress some of those stages if you have a complex service you might want to have more stages so after you do this for a few times then you will customize the CRM to fit your needs and getting back to our awareness stage in Salesforce specifically as you see here this is prospecting stage which maps to our awareness stage and make sure before we move to the education phase you document everything you learned about this lead now that the lead is past the awareness stage they're now entering the education stage now of course some education has taken place already but this is the time to have a deeper engagement this is a time to make sure your answers are custom tailored for them so for example if you share a case study on something similar you've done for another client show them how this case study can be applied to them or maybe you have some standard pricing on your website in this phase you want to make sure you're talking about specifics and customize the package and the pricing for this client I'm not suggesting you send a proposal or you start negotiating or closing the deal that's too soon you want to establish that thrust where the lead can rely on you that you're providing valuable information that you're providing real value this stage is also an opportunity for you to further qualify the lead as you get to know them more you might hear some comment that will raise some Flags if they tell you for example I never pay my vendors on time Red's flag or maybe they're just not nice they're unprofessional they could be jerks a bad client fit is not good for anyone so make a decision here as you're learning more about them if they're not a good fit for you pass on to another person or just tell them that's not a good fit let's go back to my own In-Home Care example I had a lot of questions so I asked for more detailed information both of these businesses they send me this long list of FAQs answering every question that could come to mind in addition to the FAQ one of them had this online assessment that helped identify the business that I needed for my father this assessment sealed the deal it helped me identify exactly what I needed to do now turn this around you as a service provider the entrepreneur use these tools come up with the creative tools to engage your lead maybe an online assessment maybe a long list of FAQ used maybe a short video or a series of short videos or any other tool that would help move this lead along this funnel the important part here is that you're building confidence building trust and this lead they know that they can rely on you to deliver the service and become your client so what are the steps that you should take in this education state first of all remember this education is a Continuum we started an awareness phase and now we're building on second ask open-ended questions this will help you get deeper into why the client is looking to buy this will help you understand their budget this will help you understand a lot of details that maybe you've missed out in the awareness stage also let's say your service includes some sort of software so if you have a maybe a demo that you can show that would be a plus maybe you could also do a small proof of concept that will take you a few hours but will demonstrate your ability to address the need of the client now if you sense that the lead is skeptical about your ability to deliver share with them success stories and examples on how you help other clients in very similar situations and keep in mind that in this phase and in every phase of the sales funnel communication with the client in a timely fashion is super important it's crucial as outcomes for the education stage of the sales funnel your lead should have a much better understanding and a deeper understanding of your services and you the service provider should have a deeper understanding of the requirements a common question should I send a proposal now I'm of the opinion of delaying the proposal to later stages why they want to spend a whole lot of time producing proposals and nobody's buying so there's still a negotiation phase there's still other things you want to discover but I think you have two options if you have a boilerplate service pretty straightforward your proposals are easily produced yes go ahead and send it but if you have a complex service and you have to customize that package customize the scope you have different pricing options you might want to wait till the negotiation phase before you send that proposal as you see in the Salesforce user interface the discovery tab corresponds to our education stage and here another reminder make sure you diligently document everything you're capturing about the lead enter the new CRM and be ready to move into the next phase in this funnel if you're finding the sales funnel walkthrough useful like this video And subscribe to the channel and now let's talk about the next stage evaluation one once you have previously passed the education stage they are now entering the evaluation stage keep in mind that the lead is evaluating you in every interaction from the first time they spoke with you were you professional were you responsive were you thorough were you impressive in terms of that matter information you know and how you educated them so keep in mind that evaluation happens throughout the sales funnel and every interaction could count for you or against you the other part of it is they're likely evaluating your competitors most of us want to make sure we're getting our money's worth so we talk to other people we talk to other service providers Don't Panic this is part of the process what you want to do is to try to understand what the competitors are telling them see if you can get that information and make sure you present yourself in a differentiating way the last fold of the evaluation is the internal evaluation there are other stakeholders involved in the decision-making process this internal evaluation is likely to lengthen this whole process of closing the deal so you want to be aware of who else is evaluating so you plan ingly but what are the factors that can help you anticipate the length of this evaluation phase or potentially all the phases of the sales funnel price of course a factor the harder the price is typically the longer the evaluation period is second BTC versus btb if you sell to individuals as a personal service it's likely to have a shorter sales cycle but if you're selling to to businesses there are many stakeholders in businesses another factor is complexity if you have one computer that you gotta get fixed it's not going to take a long time to evaluate the vendor to help you with that but if you have a company with 500 computers and you have some cyber security needs the evaluation period for for identifying a partner if vendor is going to help you with this work is going to take much longer another Factor importance what is the downside of a bad decision how critical is the service again in the example of the In-Home Care Service I was looking for was my father who is very important to me price was secondary other aspects were secondary it was very important to select the right partner that I needed to hire now with all the information I had all the resources all the material they sent me I began to compare number one how long have they been in business two have they provided services in similar situations three what are the credentials of their staff and workers and four price price was not the most important thing but it was still important to look at let's go back to the steps that you should take as a service provider in this evaluation phase the number one thing is this is the hottestation of communication whether it's email in-person meetings Zoom meetings make sure you prompt your responsive you answer their questions as soon as they come in so second this is a time to run a proposal and third it's very likely that your lead is speaking with competitors so this time around they might be asking you new questions they might be bringing up their objections so be on the lookout and answer these objections and address these objections very promptly also if you're not competing on price make sure you highlight your differentiators maybe you have credentials that your competitors don't have so highlight those and last but not least have a list of a few references that you can pass on to the lead these past clients that loved your work they'll be your best Advocates the outcomes of the evaluation stage of the sales funnel is as follows by now you should have made a focused effort to make sure your service meets that launch requirements second you're in a strong position to make one of those three determinations one that lead is not going to proceed with you they're going elsewhere or they decide not to buy two the lead is ready to buy but not at this time three they are ready to buy and they want to buy now now if everything checks out but the lead still says no yes it's sad at least it's going away there might be an opportunity to sell in the future so Market industry I am this person is opportunity closed no sale but do a follow-up in two or three or four months regardless of the outcome of the stage make sure you make it store update your CRM and if the lead is giving you the non if you're still in play let's move to the negotiation stage once the lead has evaluated you the terms of The Proposal their own preparednesses of the service it is possible they'll come back and negotiate on some items I would say it's probably more likely than not so what do people typically negotiate on a number of things for example pricing or maybe the time or the frequency of the service potentially they might ask you to extend the warranty so what do I recommend here don't take it personal don't think about it too much Focus first and foremost on closing that deal it works so hard to get this lead to this point don't close that deal at the same time put some parameters around what you are willing to work with now back the In-Home Care Service I was looking for for my father what did I negotiate on I asked the business owner the person I selected to do business with I asked them for a discounted hourly rate they said no I said how about if I commit to a long-term contract they like that idea they give me five dollars per hour discount and then I signed the long-term contract I got a concession they got a deal everybody's happy it's important at this point you can delete anything that can help them make that decision faster you want to sign that deal now what can you offer think of something that doesn't cost you a lot of time and money but it is of perceived value to the customer every customer every one of us we want to make sure we're getting our money's worth so offering something that's not very time consuming that will cost you a little bit more it help you close that deal and then you have a client you have another logo you have more experience and next time you can maybe make it up in upselling or cross-selling or retaining this customer for a long-term contract during this negotiation phase keep updating your CRM there's a lot of back and forth and you want to track all of that and record it in your CRM and if everything's checking out you're very close to record a sale once you and the lead have agreed on the price the terms of the proposal and all the other details the at least I'm moving to the final stage in the sales funnel the sales stage itself but before signing the deal potentially there's one hurdle especially in a B2B scenario lawyers will get involved the clients lawyers will have to look at the proposal look at all the terms and make sure they're okay with them or in some scenarios larger companies will have their own massive service agreement MSA and they'll send that to you and you'll have to get your lawyer involved to review those terms regardless lawyers will have to review this and this will add a little bit more time between the negotiation phase and closing that deal it's okay it's part of doing business be prepared now if the lawyers are not involved or once you have agreed on all the terms and what's typically called the red lines once that's all agreed upon you are ready to do two things one is to get that contract signed and two make sure you get that first payment and make that payment really easy a pro tip here I want to start this quote time kills all deals at this stage you want to be super close to the client follow up with them they email you with some changes in the contract get your lawyers on them very quickly if they have questions answered right away if you need to go to their offices and work through issues do it what's important is that you get that contract signed I've seen many deals lost in this late stage of the game sometimes the buyer that you engage sharehold for a month or two or three they moved on they could get another job maybe that was a competitor who was running neck to neck with you they heard that they lost this opportunity they'll come back and offer aggressive pricing aggressive timelines whatever the case might be my point is stay very close to the lead answer their questions very promptly if they come back to you with a lot of changes you know on the contract get your lawyers involved very quickly do whatever you can to make sure that contract gets signed an amazing example of moving very quickly on closing deals is the business owner I contracted for that in-home care service for my father as negotiated all the terms within an hour I get this email it has an e document I reviewed it I signed it he got a client I got a service everybody's happy take the final step to fully close the deal and make sure the engagement starts off on the right foot for example make sure all the timelines all the Milestones are documented now yes they're in the proposal but remember in the negotiation phase there was a lot of back and forth and vendors you know leads could forget so summarize all that information put it in an email along with us on contract and say is what we agreed to do the next Milestones here's the cancellation refund policy here's the next step that we want to take and then get ready to move that contract into delivery now regarding payments make it super easy for the client to pay you offer all options of payment check wire credit cards PayPal whatever is out there crypto if you are so inclined there might be there might be a risk there but at the end of the day what I want you to do is make it easy for them to make that payment I once lost the deal because I didn't want to pay those credit card fees that two three percent fees that that's credit cards charge you that was a silly mistake unless the deal it still hurts but hey I learned from it now keep in mind for bigger companies sometimes they have something called a purchase order a PO they have to issue the PO before you can invoice again this is part of doing business no issue there but it could delay invoicing it could impact your cash flow should be aware now once you have this on contract the PO or maybe the first payment it's time to have that project set up an internal meeting with your delivery team go over all the details of the proposal everything you committed to the expectations what is it that you should do what is it that one should do and be ready to deliver that service at the same time set up an external kickoff meeting and go over the same with the client back to RCR and proudly marked that opportunity as a close deal not two pro tips here one is if you have systems where you reach out your leads make sure you remove that lead the one you just close remove their contact information from that system so they don't get emails and can indication that is intended for leads also closing that deal or closing that opportunity it doesn't mean that the sales job is done mark your calendar in a few weeks in a month or two get back with this customer ask him how they're doing asking if they're happy with the service if they're delighted with you maybe ask them to be a reference so they can help you close the next deal we've reached the end of the sales funnel walkthrough I hope you'll be able to apply this lesson to your own sales funnel to your own business and close more deals click the like button subscribe to the channel and leave me a comment share an idea share what worked with you ask a question about sales and I'll be more happy to reply here or on Startup with ferris.com see you next time