Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is the path a stranger walks from first hearing about you to actually paying, and it narrows at every step. A thousand people might see the advert, two hundred click, forty ask for a price, twelve say yes, and only nine pay. That narrowing is why anyone calls it a funnel.

Your own steps are the ones that matter, so write them in your own words instead of copying a list from a book. In a clinic they might run advert, phone call, first visit, treatment plan, paid invoice. A shop would write advert, product page, basket, checkout, delivered order, because that is how the money arrives. There is no correct set of stages, only the set that matches how your business really sells.

Then count the people at each step, over the same period and in the same way each month, so the numbers compare. Most owners count only the two ends, money spent and money earned, which says the business is losing but never where. The useful figures are the middle ones, and they usually sit in three separate places, the advert account, the website and the invoice book. So the first afternoon of a Linkysoft account review goes on pulling those three numbers onto one sheet.

Now look for the step where the drop is worst, because that is your leak. If two hundred people reach the price page and only four ask for a quote, more advertising will not save you. You would just be paying to pour water into a bucket with a hole in it, so the hole comes first. That is the argument Linkysoft has with new clients most often, and it saves them money every time.

Here is the part nobody says out loud, because your funnel almost certainly has a step living on paper. Someone writes enquiries in a notebook, or they sit unread for two days in one inbox, and neither can be counted. Because that step cannot be counted, it quietly hides the leak from you. Joining the advert, the website and the invoice into one web application is often the cheapest fix, because it makes the missing number appear.

After that the work is ordinary, so improve the worst step, measure again next month, then take the next worst. The digital marketing team at Linkysoft starts every account this way, before it touches a single advert budget. The reason is that a bigger budget poured into a leaking funnel only loses the money faster.