How to Make Your Sales Funnel Flow Faster
Excerpts from an article by Michael J. Webb
When your company is well synchronized with market needs, prospects buy and money flows. Unfortunately, few companies can maintain a constant flow. Salespeople churn out demonstrations, samples and proposals. Marketing departments churn out newsletters, ad copy and brochures. But not enough prospects close.
What makes the sales funnel flow faster? The key is coordinating your sales and marketing efforts—aligning everyone in your organization according to the questions you ask your prospects at different stages in your relationships with them. These questions form the logical connection between the work of sales and the work of marketing.
The following are three question strategies that you can use to make your sales funnel flow faster, and some examples of how to sales and marketing can work together to move customers through the funnel.
Strategy #1: Problem/Solution
You can't sell the solution, unless you've sold the problem first. If the customer has exactly the problem you can solve, but isn't consciously ready to buy, problem/solution questions can help you show that the fit is right.
Strategy #2: Objectives, Strategies and Issues
The second type of question gets at your prospects' business and departmental objectives. What strategies will they use to achieve those objectives? What issues and challenges do they face? Stepping back to get a broader view, you can scope out people's perspectives (including decision makers'), as well as departmental politics and priorities. You can build relationships, steer clear of time-wasters and start generating a consensus, even before you start "selling."
Strategy #3: Synchronization
Synchronization questions are key to effectiveness. Marketing and selling never work when you ask your prospects to take actions they are not ready for. Synchronization questions make you focus on learning the decision maker's priorities. That person's business life, like yours, is rife with problems. Which ones require attention now, and which can wait? What are the alternatives, the pros and cons? Who else should be involved, and why? How trustworthy is the available information?