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Sales Cycle? Sales Funnel? What’s Yours Look Like?

Hi! 

Was the positioning worksheet useful?

Let me know. 

I had put it together for a friend on Thursday. 

You might be thinking about what you should be in your market. 

So, why not share it?

The last few weeks, I went back to basics. 

I started going through notes and ideas about selling and marketing services. 

You might be more focused on products, but the similarities between the two are much greater than people realize. 

For me, the gap I wanted to solve was making the sales process more thought out, like a real funnel. 

A few caveats when I use the term funnel:

  • The generic funnel should only be a starting point. Something is better than nothing. 
  • Your funnel should be specific to your business. 
  • Most people throw the term around and never actually use one. 
  • The funnel is a marketing tool. Don’t let it get co-opted by the sales department. 

So I put down some thoughts on the sales cycle/funnel to show you how I’ve reconfigured my thinking. 

Shall we?

The generic funnel has 4 stages: 

  • Attention
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action

AIDA

This should be the starting point. 

If you don’t have anything, this is better than nothing. 

For me, I’ve got seven stages:

Here they are with the intention:

  • Stage 1: Awareness: Get them to a blog/newsletter/podcast
  • Stage 2: Sign up for a newsletter! (Thank you for being here!) 
  • Stage 3: Join me for a FREE webinar. (The last one I did is here.)
  • Stage 4: Buy an intro item like an ebook/learning session/etc.
  • Stage 5: Get a mid-range product like “Fans For Life”
  • Stage 6: Buy a product with a more significant investment like “The Whiteboard Workshop”
  • Stage 7: Dip into my vault items. (The stuff only I can do like advisory work)

What does this mean?

I have laid this out to work at different levels of investment, depending on their comfort and trust in me. 

It also allows me to have ideas that fit where people are in the sales cycle. 

How does this apply to you? 

First, do you have a sales cycle laid out? 

If not, take a moment to sketch the steps important to your business. 

Second, do you have products/services for different levels of the buying process?

I struggled with this. 

Part of the last few weeks has been figuring out how to lay something like this out. 

My suggestion for you is to think about this in terms of:

  • Something free to get people into your network. 
  • Something inexpensive that allows people to get a better feel for your thinking. 
  • A middle-range item that solidifies the connection. 
  • A higher-end item that lets you deliver your best thinking or ideas. 

Customize this however you’d like, but think it through. 

Third, think about what actions you will take to kickstart your sales cycle. 

For me, I’m going to use my articles and podcast appearances to raise awareness of me. 

I just did a LinkedIn live with Inc. contributor, Bruce Eckfeldt. 

You may do some kind of podcast appearances, get quoted in the news, or some other publicity opportunity that delivers more eyeballs for you. 

Fourth, what metrics are you going to judge success? 

Mine are easy to measure. 

Awareness on my website and podcast is easy to measure. 

Deeper in the sales cycle, the measures can be a bit more difficult. But newsletter signups are a good measure at Stage 2. 

So on! 

Let me know if this is helpful. 

Dave