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hi which of these ten mistakes in sales funnel management could hurt you the most and what can you do about them how can you improve your sales funnel management the consensus view is that there are 10 common floors and sales funnel management one not segmenting the list and prospects properly to not following communications with a call to action 3 no balance between lead generation that is finally the leads and lead management that is doing something with them for centering the sales funnel management on the cell instead of the buyer 5 involving self doesn't too early 6 lack of timely follow-up with leads 7 conversely we hang on to dead leads for too long aight focusing on the technology and said of the sales process 9 getting proper training and 10 not measuring each day the sales funnel well what should you do about it what does good sales funnel management look like I think there are five elements one builder stages around the buyers journey not the sales process to measure the leg and leakage at every stage of that journey three segments by behavior not demographics demographics or a poor indicator behavior or very strong indicator for make sales funnel management a shared activity and by that I mean between sales and marketing and five run experiments to optimize where you can make the biggest improvements to your sales funnel management let me show you what I found when looking for articles on sales funnel management I'm going to share the research with you synthesize their conclusions and then give you my own spin and a little bit more depth on those recommendations so our first article comes from Martin from clever ism and it's how to effectively manage your sales funnel now given what I talked into Google this is pretty much exactly what I would be hoping to find unfortunate it's a good example of three common floors and funnel management thinking about you and your process more than you think about the buyer and there's dumbing down your sales process to arbitrary stages and not understanding the common effect of high conversion of early stages to low conversion at later stages dated 2014 I think candidly the thoughts in this I've dated about circuit 2000 or maybe even 1990s not one I'm going to recommend our next article comes from Stuart Leon and it's on the Salesforce blog sales funnel management simplify by cutting steps not corners now from the get-go I love where that's going cutting steps and not corners and the essence of that point he does actually make other points through the article but this is one of the points he makes in the article is pulled it out into the heading I think it's an important one by cutting steps what Stuart's referring to is that frequently the problem with progression is created by us we put steps in the way that the buyer doesn't really need to take so that's where we were where we need to cut steps but he's not saying cut corners I think in principle that's a really strong argument and is well put i would add to that don't try and go faster than your buyer basically although we often want the buyer to go faster we can't get ahead of them so what we really need is to find ways for the buyer to move forward more freely perhaps more quickly rather than to try to rush them but I actually quite like this article and we recommend it as a worthy read our third blog that we found was the four biggest mistakes in managing your sales funnel by Al Davidson look I might have suggested mistake tuna me though that if only for mistakes that let me go down to mistake number two focusing on crm technology and cetera sales process look I might have wanted to change it if I was writing it to talk about the buyer and their journey rather than the sales process but I've met I generally agree with these four mistakes i think they are common i think they are worth commenting it's accurate it's also a little light up now either this author EL davidson or the author from blog one are looking at the exact same prospects or one copy the other because their language is eerily similar just saying okay blog for this is a crack-up so an expert guide a sales funnel management 22,000 goods blah blah blah so what they've done is they've asked 22 opinion leaders for what they think the one biggest mistake is and they compiled the results all right that's fantastic so good on you for that effort and we need to cut them a little bit of slack recognize that each of these experts has been asked independently so they say the same thing or they even contradict each other you we should forgive that I think what I've done in the wrap-up is I've synthesized what I think these 22 removed any duplicates as well as the other blog articles have said but for all that I can recommend that you read the article as well as my synthesis of the article and final I was sharing not because it was found on google but because it was shared a lot I'm 299 times on miller linkedin where's litter 299 times on linkedin which is a great result it's a very fish it's a very new subject so tips on managing sales funnel but basically it's for selling tickets specifically for selling tickets so two things come as a consequence one is that it's the language and the examples are really really specific and secondly it's a very simple transaction it's a lot simpler than the audience that I typically am writing for you and therefore might be a little bit that the process employed might be a little too light for you well it seems from that but there is a consensus around a number of flaws let me highlight the 10 biggest flaws that i read into those articles not segmenting properly not following communications up with a call to action at the end of each communication piece not balancing lead generation finding them and lead management doing something with them set during the sales funnel mention on the seller instead of the buyer involving the salesperson too early lack of timely follow-up hanging onto dead leads for too long which is kind of the inverse right so follow them up really quickly but if they're not progressing then let them go focusing on technology and set a sales process not getting proper training and not measuring each stage of your sales funnel well if that's the consensus view what should we do about those common floors and sales funnel management what does good sales final management look like I think there are five elements build your stages around the buyers journey not the sales process and then related to that measure how long it takes you to move buyers that's lag and how often you fail to move buyers that's leakage at every stage now that's not necessarily what we typically do in fact it's not what we do let's look at what most CRMs do they've got sales process to them so it's definitely a shift but here's the kind of geeky thing I want to argue a carefully because I think it's important segment by behavior and not demographics demographics are a poor proxy for potential behavior what a measure actual behavior for example look at the late funnel behavior of those who went quickly through early stages versus those who went slower through the early stages or at those who came via web versus social versus list versus referral they're more interesting indicators and there'll be more telling indicators in your sales funnel number four make sales funnel management a shared activity in the very least sales of marketing why not the whole leadership team and number five run experiments to optimize where you can make the biggest difference in your leg in your leakage but here's the key looked at decrease your leakage not your leg in a lot of experiments that we've run trying to speed the process up increases leakage at an unacceptable rate by contrast reducing leakage does not affect lag so work on leakage but number two and this is going to contradict my earlier point remove roadblocks to lag that is identify is some of the lag caused by you are you putting impediments in front of the buyers and causing the go slower are you ask them to make two bigger decision at each of the points each other the stages in their journey think about from their perspective and find ways to remove roadblocks for them and when you know what sources are generating the best outcomes double down on those sources you can do a whole lot more a whole lot more easily by changing your sources than your tactics when you know that one source leads to a better outcome than another so there you go lots for you to do lots for you to think about good luck I want to give you a couple tools to help you firstly if you got value out of today's blog and you haven't already go to mathmarketing.com/blog or go to youtube.com forward slash mouth marketing and subscribe to the blog so you're the first to hear about it but when you're managing your sales funnel you clearly need a tool that describes what the sales funnel is supposed to look like and a tool for measuring what's actually going on we've done a lot of work on funnel plan and what you'll find when you look at the new funnel plane is that the building of the process the plan the sales funnel as its supposed to operate is now really really easy and easy for you to do with sales and marketing the room together but that's just the start now you want to measure it we've added the ability to integrate sales funnel with your CRM and what that means is that you can actually see what your sales funnel management is looking like compared what it's supposed to look like that's your plan what's actually going on is you CRM and it looks at the two together and give you a good sense of what you need to change then it gives you for free advice and what you need to change to improve the plan versus actual take a look at funnel plan comm check it out for yourself lots of all lined up for next week I look forward to seeing you then until then may your funnel be full and always blowing our thanks this week to Berlin Vienna for her research an intern at math marketing to f5 contributors Martin for effectively managing sales funnel Stuart Liang for sales funnel management al Davidson for managing the sales funnel khobam phillipson for expert guide on sales management that was the 22 collated articles and Bob for hammer manager sales your ticket sales funnel very specific one thank you to Anika for your amazing production my name to McFarland and it's been my pleasure to script and present this week's show