But, if:

🔴 You are generating a good amount of leads but not enough sales….

🔴 The Sales Process is taking longer than it should…

🔴 You are losing money instead of profiting from your business…

…then you are in the messy part of the process, the middle one.

You might even be thinking, “Why did I even start with this sales funnel thing in the first place?”

You might even be thinking of dropping this strategy altogether.

But I urge you not to. 

STOP thinking about Quitting.

Did you know that 68% of business owners in the world are still unaware about the concept of funnels, let alone building one for their business?

You already took the action to get started.

You have already crossed the most difficult part.

You took action and built a sales funnel for your business.

Things might not be working as you imagined them to, but it doesn’t mean you should quit on the idea of it all.

Having reached this stage, don’t you want to experience the most beautiful part of the process you have started?

Your own Profitable and Successful Sales Funnel?

Well, everything in this world needs testing and optimization. 

It is only by testing that you get to know what’s working and what’s not.

And it is only after that you can find the leaks in the process and fix the sales funnel.

So let’s do just that by finding out…

What’s Wrong With Your Sales Funnel?

According to research, only 50% of your leads are really willing to buy. 

To capture the rest of 50%, your leads need to be nurtured. 

Hence, you need to make it easy for them to make the buying decision.

But, doing that isn’t simple though.

About 79% of leads are lost due to poor funnel execution or lack of support during the customer journey, which means you can lose on a lot of potential customers if your sales funnel is leaking.

No matter how hard you work to make your sales funnels perfect, it can still have cracks and leaks, which may result in you losing your potential customers. So you need to fix the sales funnel.

A few reasons why your sales funnel might be failing could be that:

❌ There are too many steps in the funnel… 

❌ You are not qualifying your leads for the purchase…

❌ You are not split testing the funnel…

❌ Not providing enough information to the lead…

❌ Poor customer support, etc.

The reason why a sales funnel is called a funnel rather than a tube or pipe is because it filters out unqualified leads, just like a real funnel filters out unnecessary elements.

Though you may have a large number of leads, the actual number of potential customers is usually lesser. 

Along their journey, chances are most of them are lost midway as they fail to progress, get stuck, or disappear due to leaks in your funnel.

As I mentioned, to fix a sales funnel it can take some experimenting, but it is not impossible.

Let’s do it step by step:

Find Where Your Customers Get Stuck 

This is the first step to fix a sales funnel.

It is easy to figure out where a customer is facing difficulty if she is in direct contact with you, but this flexibility is not possible in case of an automated sales funnel.

But there are now ways to track how users interact with your website, using which you can help understand their behavior towards your business and then optimize based on that data.

There are a number of analytics tools available in the market that can track the user’s journey on your website, from the start to the point where they eventually drop-off.

The number one free tool for doing this is Google Analytics.

You can set goals in Google Analytics (Goals Section) and see how many users reach the final conversion page and how many drop off at different stages of your funnel.

Google Analytics allows you to make a funnel report, that tells you exactly where your customers drop-off.

After gathering this data, try to understand the reasons behind leads dropping off at different stages of the funnel. Some of the questions you can be asking yourself are:

🚩 Does the Payment Page doesn’t load under 5 seconds?

🚩 Are people not staying on your blog posts long enough to read the entire post?

🚩 Are people not clicking on the download now button for a free gift that you think is valuable for your audience to download?

When the data tells you where and why your leads might be dropping from your sales funnel, you can start working on…

Improving The Technical Parts Of A Sales Funnel

While Google Analytics tells you a lot about where your customers drop-off, it doesn’t exactly tell you which part of a particular page turns down your user.

This problem can be solved by some tools that tell you which elements your users interact with the most, what they are looking at, what percentage of pages they have scrolled, which version of the page is working better compared to the last one, etc. 

These two tools are:

1. Heatmaps

Heatmaps show you which part of the webpage is most interacted with.

Using the data from heatmaps, you can figure out what your users are looking at, where they are clicking the most, how much percentage of the page they are scrolling before hitting the back button, etc.

The data from heatmaps can help you decide if you should optimize your website for page speed, change the positions of your CTAs, write better content, the funnel design, the entire user experience of your website, and a plethora of other things you could improve.

Also:

✅ If your page speed is low, you might want to invest in a better hosting for your website, or you might want to invest into a Content Delivery Network, or a Caching Service.

✅ If your leads are not engaging with the content on your site, you might need to hire a better copywriter.

✅ If the design of your website is not modern, responsive and clear, you might need to hire a new website designer.

✅ If your visitors have to work hard to find out the common pages like, checkout, contact, about, etc, then you need to improve the entire flow of the website to offer great user experience to your visitor.

✅ On your buying pages, if the Buy Buttons are not working, or not visible enough or just blend with your normal content, then you might need to change their colors in contrast to your content such that they attract the attention of the reader. You might also decide to place them at positions on your page where it is easily visible, like above the fold, for that matter.

Having this data at hand can help you fix your funnel for the better, and Google Analytics and Heat Maps can help you a lot in that but… 

…that is not all.

How would you know if one thing is working or the other. 

Well, for that you can use…

2. A/B Testing

A/B testing (also known as split testing or bucket testing) is a method of comparing two versions of a web page or app against each other to determine which one performs better.

Which means, you run two similar campaigns with few changes, and then the results of the test will tell you which variant you should stick with, for your business.

Few things you can A/B test are:

• Changing the colour of a CTA button to see which one gets most clicked upon. Sometimes just this one change can make a huge difference in conversion rates.
• Changing the font size
• Changing the positioning of elements like CTA buttons, sign up forms, etc.

However, it is not always easy to find out what’s causing the leak in your funnel, with extensive testing you will eventually find a winner for your audience and in the end it’ll be all worth it.

Educating Your Audience

This may not sound technical but hang on with me for a minute…

Customers are really smart today.

Above 90% of customers try to make a purchase without contacting the customer support.

So, it is your duty to make their buying process easier for them, every step along the way.

Also this is one of the important steps to fix the sales funnel.

But as the buying decision comes at the end of the funnel, the only way to ensure they reach the bottom of the funnel is by building interest and desire about your products and services in your funnel.

Fact: 

If you already don’t have a strong brand image, it is very unlikely that your leads are ready to make a purchase from you.

So, to convert them into your customers, you will need to nurture them.

You’ll have to make them aware about: 

🟢 the problems you can solve for them…

🟢 the solutions you can offer to their problems…

🟢 the products that can satisfy their wants and desires…

Slowly and steadily they will start getting interested in your products and if your copy is great, your leads will start desiring your products and services, before they are finally ready to make a purchase.

This is exactly what the middle of a sales funnel should do. 

Build Interest and Desire.

And the best way to nurture your leads on automation is…

Email Marketing

Set up automated sequences for your leads that enter your funnel, and then test your conversion rates.

This is the step wherein you can try sending different kinds of content to different segments of your audience based on their interests, and then learn using metrics like Open Rates and Click Through Rates whether your audience is liking what you are sharing or not.

Read this article to learn Why Email Marketing Is Important For Your Business

Automation smoothens the process and saves you and your team from the unwanted stress and waste of time and energy of educating each of your leads individually over calls or on social media.

This way you can take your lead down a slippery slide in your funnel to the point where the natural next step will be to buy your product or service.

Now you know how to fix your funnel for leaks and cracks on a technical front. 

But if you want to ensure you make more sales out of every lead that enters your funnel, read on…

Integrate a Solid CRM In Your Business

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

Analytics, Heat Map, A/B testing, Automations are all cool, but if you don’t have good customer support, you’ll lose a lot of money that could be yours.

Let me explain why:

About 55% customers back out while making a purchase due to bad user experience.

And 40% of customers who have had a bad experience with a company are not likely to purchase any from them for at least 2-3 years.

Plus, consider the bad reputation from word of mouth in your potential customer’s friend circles.

Do you want to bear such loss? 

Customer support is crucial. 

You need to be available to your customer all the time.

You should be easy to reach and should provide multiple methods for them to contact you, through mediums they are most comfortable with.

Most importantly, have a positive and friendly attitude towards the customer and guide them where they need help.

One most common online user behavior is Abandoned Cart. 

And there are a number of CRM tools available in the market to keep a track of such activities. 

It’s not only that the customers should be able to contact you but based on the data of user behaviours, you can reach out to these customers and offer the help that they need in making the purchase.

Some of the best CRM tools that you can choose for  your business are:

• SalesForce
• Hubspot CRM
• Microsoft Dynamics 365, etc.

Whether you want to include a CRM in your business or not is totally up to you because it will need financial investments from your end to use the tool and hire the right talent to make the best out of it.

So decide wisely. 

Moving ahead to one of the most overlooked but most important steps for building relationships with your customers, and getting repeat business from the same customers, and that is…

Providing Excellent After Sales Support

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the last step of the funnel is Retention.

This is also the last step to fix a sales funnel.

This means providing excellent after sales support to your customers, i.e., after the sale has been made, the customers should not feel left out.

It is important for you to keep strengthening your relations with the customers even after the sale, as it will bring them back and you will get more profit from the same customer.

Which means, savings on further acquisition costs and more profits.

Now who wouldn’t want that, isn’t it?

Keep your customer in loop with the latest products you launch, build interest and desire for them as well, and make sales from your existing customers AGAIN.

You can also give special discounts as customer loyalty points. This will help you build a good will for your brand.

Not just that, a happy customer will tell their friends and family about your business which will bring you more sales and it will be easier for you to convert those leads this time, as they already have a positive image of your brand in their mind.

That’s the dream of every business isn’t it? 

To get referrals for the business. 

And who better than your satisfied and happy, existing customers to get those.

But all of this is possible only if you execute this last stage of the funnel effectively.

Conclusion

Now you know why your sales funnel might not be getting you the results you wanted.

You also know how to fix the sales funnel.

You even know what else to do after fixing your broken sales funnel.

So lift up your spirits, take action, find out the exact reason behind your sales funnel not performing as you wanted it to, optimize it and kill it in your business.

If you need to get your basics right about sales funnels. Check this article of mine.

What is the step you are going to take immediately after reading this post to fix the sales funnel?

Let me know in the comments below or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.