Recently, I’ve written about two aspects of the sales funnel that are typically overlooked though they directly contributing to revenue. However, you’ll never reach the right customers without a successful branding process and you won’t be able to sell products (or services) if you don’t understand your competition from a shifted perspective.
Now that you know what your potential purchases aren’t getting from the marketplace and have identified who your company truly serves, the next best step is to capture how you can satisfy the right customers.
There are all sorts of acronyms for the sales funnel. TOFU, MOFU, BOFU… AIDA… ARC… SPIN — you get the point (even if you don’t get all the acronyms).
A robust sales funnel has six stages:
- Awareness - this opportunity may be achieved through organic or paid email marketing, search engine placement or social media messaging where you are identifying prospective consumers out of the entire client opportunity
- Consideration - once the connection has moved to interest, consumers begin searching for information to evaluate how they can meet their identified needs through website research and eCommerce reviews
- Preference - this stage cultivates relationships and can influence perceptions on the value of your solution, where informed consumers make a well-timed decision for the best product or service for their situation
- Purchase - once the conversion has been made for the consumer to become your customer, using a systemized follow-up methodology that doesn’t rely on human memory improves opportunities for touch points and increased positive interaction
- Loyalty - repeat business is essential, though if ‘forced’ or achieved via lack-of-choices, your business is contingent on satisficing needs
- Advocacy - leading to increased revenue, the best funnel is supported by word-of-mouth endorsement
Wait. What’s that word satisficing? It happens after sales, after all the interaction and research, so you must have done things right, right?
Wrong.
If you’ve put the wrong effort into getting any sale, then you aren’t satisfying anyone (except maybe a short-sighted sales manager). What you’ve been doing is throwing spaghetti on a wall to see what sticks and gets you to your target number.
That’s satisficing — it’s taking a “sales suspect” and giving them most of what they want rather than fulfilling all that they need with your solution.
Here’s an example. You sell two microwaves (one at 1100 cubic inches at 700 kw power and the other at 900 cubic inches and 1000 kw power). A consumer needs a microwave, and he likes to reheat leftovers quickly. This means a higher power machine.
Mr. Consumer comes to your website and sees the two options. But the higher power microwave won’t fit his current leftover dishes. So he will either have to shop for new dishes after buying your smaller cubic inch microwave or he will have to wait longer to heat his meal evenly.
This is satisficing — it makes the consumer pick something he doesn't want to get an option he does want, where he is not being totally satisfied with the process or prospects even if he purchases from you.
While easiest to describe in the purchase and post-purchase phase as its easier to quantify, this may occur in every and any phase of the funnel.
This is when you could be satisficing:
- Awareness satisficing - providing a limited opportunity for learning about your products or (perhaps worse) giving the right message on the wrong channel where your future loyal customers don’t listen
- Consideration satisficing - having inventory available immediately, though it doesn’t meet the specifications the future loyal customer wants (this is a needs-based miss), or having gaps in your communications strategy for web research
- Preference satisficing - frequently involving delayed or delinquent responses to inquiries, or involving a top-heavy sales pitch without reliable facts and outside endorsements
- Purchase satisficing - shoddy packaging, generic (or absent) thank you messaging, or not having the right suggested complementary purchases that exceed expectation stop your sales funnel dead in the water
- Loyalty satisficing - a one-time customer will not return to your company for future needs
- Advocacy satisficing - the only impact here is negative if you’ve failed in any previous step
Strong strategic branding addresses the first three errors, which is why you spend time before pushing a product to answer the right questions. Beating the competition before you get started addresses the last three errors thereby avoiding quicksand.
Don’t just set the target numbers and hope to make monthly sales, or you won’t have very many months to make sales. Fix it. Do the right thing at the right time by identifying what people want and then giving them more.
Remember, there is a human behind the curtain even in the new “fake news” filters, a future topic in these articles where we’ll discuss the importance of real reviews versus the rumor mill affecting your business.
Heather M. Hilliard is Principal and Chief Strategist for R. Roan Enterprises, LLC, a professional services consulting firm supporting businesses in pointed areas of expertise as well as with individuals for targeted projects or career development. For more articles like these, visit her posts on LinkedIn or on G+.
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