The sales funnel has become a journey through a cylinder
The classical funnel is no more
The sales funnel has always been presented as a funnel, however as Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions) in her blog post “What happened to the sales funnel?” points out the funnel has become a cylinder.
The classical view was capturing a lot of leads at the wide side of the funnel and ending up with a few leads converting into customers at the narrow side.
The funnel has become a cylinder
This has changed due to the times that have been changing:
- Leads select and choose your products or services
- No information flow control as information is available everywhere
- Buyers want strategic insights and concepts instead of solutions
- A buying journey instead of a sales cycle
- Push (like email marketing) is out, pull (like websites) is it.
- Peers, not companies, have become more important to decisions
The new marketing and new sales
This all needs rethinking of your marketing into the world of the buyer:
About the problems and issues of your potential buyers are dealing with, as they will first want to develop competence about their issues in order to be confident enough for making decisions.
The funnel has become a cylinder inviting leads at one end, who become customers at the other end.
During their journey through the cylinder your marketing and sales need to feed them and exchange concepts, strategic ideas and insights to move them further towards to their purchase decision. This decision they can then take with confidence by having acquired enough information and insight from different sources.
The new marketing role is to propose concepts, insights and strategic ideas, not just products and services.
The new sales needs to understand the specific problems and issues of the potential customer and possibly deliver consulting and exchange of information, not just the purchase price at a certain quantity.
Reach your leads early during their information acquiring
During the information acquiring part, the website will play an important role as potential buyers will screen and scrape the Internet for information, thus also your website.
In order to reach your leads early in their decision process you need to identify your website visitors by company name and monitor them on your website.
LEADSExplorer allows you to reach your prospects early in their buying decision process: from the very first visit on your website.
The journey through the cylinder
During the journey through the cylinder, you need to monitor the increase or decrease of interest in your products, solution or services. This is expressed by the number of website visits and the pages visited that is in relation to your communications exchanges.
The increase or decrease of interest related to your communications exchange is analyzed visually, as provided by LEADSExplorer, on a time-chart together with your communications exchanges for easy follow-up.
As the funnel has been converted into a cylinder due to the changes in the decision process of the potential buyer, your marketing and sales methods need to change too.
Starting with your website as a source of information upon your potential leads and customers.
More from LEADS Explorer
- The curse of knowledge in a sales pitch
- Do you report your real funnel to your sales manager?
- Emotional Stages of a Salesman during the Sales Process
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[...] The Leads Explorer created an interesting post today on The sales funnel has become a journey through a cylinderHere’s a short outlineNo information flow control as information is available everywhere – Buyers want strategic insights and concepts instead of solutions – A buying journey instead of a sales cycle – Push (like email marketing) is out, pull (like websites) … [...]
Thanks for talking about my concept of the sales funnel as a cylinder. I’d like to counter something you said and see what you and your readers think.
You wrote: “Push (like email marketing) is out, pull (like websites) is it.”
I’d like to counter that email marketing can be transformed into pull marketing when your readers are actually subscribing to your communications on their own because your content is valuable. [versus the company opting them in]
Additionally, websites are only a “pull” factor if your content gets found by your leads and is relevant enough to “pull” them in by giving them the insights and information they need to solve their problem, answer their challenge or take advantage of a strategic opportunity. [there are a lot of company-focused websites out there that lose mindshare as fast as they get it]
I believe that almost any marketing method can be transformed into a “pull” method, if done with a tightly focused customer perspective.
What do you think?
Thanks!
Ardath
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Hi Ardath,
Thanks for replying.
If people actually subscribe to a newsletter or similar, then email marketing can become pull marketing. However in many cases email marketing is sending out many emails with the hope of addressing an interested person in a company.
Leads Explorer