A Day in the Life of the Reverse Funnel System
A Day in the Life of the Reverse Funnel System
This blog will take a day-in-the-life look at the Reverse Funnel System. If you have been looking for a way to close more deals and build your pipeline, this article should give you some new ideas. For those of you not engaged in sales, we'll show how this system can be applied to any other business process where there is an inherent funnel that needs to be converted into a reversal. The goal is to help businesses get past roadblocks that are preventing them from growing their revenues or production volume.
At a high level, we're going to look at how the system works and detail how you can use it to get past roadblocks that are impacting your revenue. To make things easier, we'll use the sales process as an example, but this will work equally well for any other business process where there is a conversion from demand to sales.
So let's get started with a quick overview of the system. Once you've read this article, you'll have all the information needed to dive in and apply this system to your own business processes.
Overview of the Reverse Funnel System
The first thing we need to do is understand what a reverse funnel system is and why it works. A reverse funnel system is a repeatable sales approach designed to convert prospective customers into paying customers. While this concept may seem like common sense, it's not so obvious when you first start implementing it because most companies use a traditional funnel approach to sales. Take the example below:
© Dan Seltman, ReverseFunnel.com Normally, companies go after prospective customers that "qualify" as potential buyers (those at the top of the funnel). If a company gets the customer to go through the product or service (the sales cycle), then there is a higher likelihood of closing that deal. The problem with this approach is that there's usually a long sales cycle and most customers will quit before making it through. To compound matters, some businesses have ineffective sales processes that cause prospective customers to drop out early in the process. The result is that companies don't make enough deals to justify their marketing investments and they are forced to switch strategies. To address these problems, companies need to learn how to reverse the funnel by turning prospects into paying customers instead of waiting for them to come in first. If you want to grow your company, the first step is to learn how to get prospects to buy from you. Here's how it works… 1) Prospects are invited into your system by an invitation that offers them value. 2) Prospects take an action like a webinar, e-book download, or product demo by providing their contact information. 3) After they have taken an action, they are added to a list of prospects that is being managed by salesperson(s). 4) Salesperson follows up with prospects and attempts to close the deal. 5) If the company can close deals faster than it adds new leads into the funnel then it wins. If a company can't make enough deals to justify its marketing investment then it has to find another way to grow. As you can see, this is a simple process that focuses on generating leads and getting them into the sales funnel as quickly as possible. It's also a system that allows you to choose what kind of material they will receive when they join the system. It doesn't limit their choices, but it does create an urgent need for them to take action by adding their contact information into the sales process.
At first glance, this might seem like an obvious sales approach and most companies already follow this model. Unfortunately, most businesses are using a traditional funnel approach to sales and they are leaving a lot of money on the table by throwing a lot of leads into the top of the funnel. The problem with this approach is that most companies fail to convert enough prospects into paying customers because they don't have an effective lead generation system. Instead of going after prospects that are more likely to buy, companies need to go after prospects that are more likely to give their contact information. This is where reverse funnels come in handy because you can take anyone whether they like your product or not and add them as a lead with your company. The goal of the reverse funnel is to make the payment process as painless as possible for the prospect by using a low pressure sales approach. The salesperson doesn't need to worry about selling, just about getting your prospects to take an action like completing a webinar or downloading a PDF and then asking them for their contact information. Once you have their contact information, you can pass them along to your sales team or send them over to your CRM system and track them there. To make things even easier, most of the information is already collected by various forms that prospects fill out when they sign up with your company.
The next step is to show you how this system works. This is where you'll learn the best way to implement this sales approach so you can start generating more revenue and expanding your business's reach. Let's walk through the steps of how a reverse funnel works and how you can use it to take your sales team from serving customers to serving leads.
Step 1 – Idea Generation
The first step in any sales process is generating as many ideas as possible. In the case of our sales example, this means going through a customer's website looking for existing opportunities that can be converted into paying customers (opportunities that have problems that need solutions). The goal here is to generate enough ideas so we'll have plenty of material to talk over with prospects in order to get them excited about buying from us. The best way to do this is by creating a list of prospects and going through their website looking for opportunities. If they don't have an opportunity, then you can reach out to them via email, social media, or phone and ask questions that will reveal similar problems their customers have. One of the best methods for generating ideas is by cold calling prospects via telephone to find out how they're doing and what products they offer. After you have an idea of what problems your products or services can solve then it's time to move on to making a sales pitch.
The sales pitch stage is where you'll start talking directly with prospective customers about how your product or service solves their problems.
Conclusion
In order to sell something, your potential customers have to be aware of your product or service. There's no way around it and that's why marketing is the most important aspect of any business. It doesn't matter how great your product or service is, if people don't know it exists then they will never buy from you. The first step in any effective marketing campaign is to learn how to generate leads online. It doesn't matter if you're selling products or services, if you don't have a base of prospects that are interested in what you have to offer then there's no way you'll ever make the sale.