How can I leverage the sales process to increase my bottom line?

Imagine there is a giant invisible funnel in the sky and every time you make an impression on a potential customer, you toss them into the funnel.  Some people will just float around the rim because no matter how many times you reach out to them, they will never become a customer, but some will drop down to the first level of the funnel, the level called ‘Awareness’, which is where that customer will start to sense that they may need to make a decision about your product or service at some point in time.

The second level of the funnel is called ‘Interest’.  This is where your potential customer is starting to feel some pressure to make a decision, but they aren’t quite ready to decide.  The third level of the funnel is called ‘Consideration’.  This is where the potential customer starts to reach out to your business with a call, a visit or a form fill.  This is also where you can begin selling and begin tracking that potential customer through the decision-making process.  Up until this point, you didn’t even realize this potential customer existed.  They were simply being driven by brand awareness.

The next level in the funnel is called ‘Commitment’.  This is the part where the potential customer starts down the process of making a final decision and finally, there is the ‘Decision’ process where the sale is closed.  In theory, once a customer has made a decision they drop through the bottom of the funnel and that’s where most businesses stop.  They believe they have captured the sale. 

Most businesses believe the sales process is now finished, but that is not the case.  If your business can handle the process after the sale with care and grace, you will then begin to build loyalty among those customers who have bought from you.  Loyalty means that those customers will then start the process of word-of-mouth advertising to their friends and family, and when you have loyal former customers who are then tossing new customers into the top of the funnel without you putting in any effort to do so, the funnel starts to expand and you begin getting more customers dropping through the funnel than you ‘ve ever had before. 

This is how you leverage your paid advertising to increase your word-of-mouth advertising and increase the bottom line for your business.