Sales

Suffering from a Flabby Sales Funnel? 3 Ways to Make It Fit

January 16, 2013

This year, resolve to transform your business by building a fitter, healthier sales funnel.

When salespeople and marketers hear the term “sales funnel,” it conjures up a pretty universal image. But while many sales and marketing leaders behave as if they believe that optimal sales funnels feature a smooth, diagonal shape that progressively narrows from top to bottom, Bob Apollo doesn’t see it that way.

In fact, not only is that idealized model imperfect, in fact many real-life sales funnels are bloated at the bottom — a situation Bob likes to refer to as “flabby.”
In a post on his blog, Apollo, the founder and CEO of UK-based B2B sales and marketing consultancy Inflexion-Point, argues that while flabby funnels contain more apparent opportunities at later stages, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the funnel is more valuable.
On the contrary, many of those so-called opportunities turn out to be poorly qualified, unlikely to turn into revenue and are in fact going nowhere fast. Instead of that fuller funnel being more lucrative, it’s actually hopelessly inefficient and filled with flab.
“With flabby funnels, vendors fail to recognize that opportunities are unlikely to buy until way too late in the process,” Apollo explained in a recent conversation with OpenView. “Those opportunities have been allowed to progress down the funnel based on sales activity despite the fact that there’s no compelling momentum on the buyer’s part — soaking up resources and distracting attention from the real opportunities.”
By contrast, a “fit” funnel more closely resembles the shape of a margarita glass. Opportunities are thoroughly vetted at earlier stages, and only the ones with a true chance to convert pass through. Taking a little more time upfront avoids wasting a huge amount of resources later.
The result? Apollo points out numerous benefits to a fitter funnel, including:

  • Improved sales and marketing efficiency
  • Larger quantities of fast-closing, highly qualified leads
  • A much shorter sales cycle

Not bad. So how can expansion-stage sales and marketing organizations trim the fat and fight the flab?
According to Apollo there are three ways of slimming-down a bloated sales funnel:

1) Make Your Funnel More Buyer-Centric

Apollo says sales and marketing organizations must factor behavioral information into when and why they allow prospects to advance through the sales funnel. Milestones must be based on buying behavior, not sales activity. Taking a buyer-centric approach allows companies to more clearly define the true stages within their funnels, and help them weed out prospects that have no real intention to purchase much earlier in the process.

2) Eliminate Wasted Effort

Companies can’t afford to waste time or money on activities that have add real value to the buying decision process. That involves taking a closer look at the content marketers and salespeople choose to create and share with their prospects.
“Marketing deliverables and sales tools must be designed with the buyer’s journey in mind,” Apollo says. “If you can’t identify how and why a particular piece serves to facilitate the buying process, or where it should be used, you’ve probably wasted your time producing it”.

3) Think Like an Engineer

Apollo believes that adopting lean thinking can enable salespeople and marketers to greatly improve their funnel efficiency. “Lean thinking encourages us to progressively eliminate the things that stand in the way of a successful buying decision”.
“You have to adopt a process mentality, and be constantly asking ‘is this activity adding value?’ and ‘what more could I do to facilitate a successful buying process?’ And just as an engineer would, you need to continually refine the process based on evidence”.
Apollo believes that sales and marketing teams need to jointly explore how they can design and implement a repeatable process that systematically attracts, engages, qualifies, persuades and converts more of the right sort of prospects into customers.

Benefits to Reshaping Your Funnel

Like any long-term fitness plan, reshaping your funnel takes commitment, and it will almost certainly force you to change the way you — and your sales and marketing team — view the various stages within your funnel.
But rest assured, Apollo explains, that hard work, focus and discipline will pay off.
“We’re in a world where if you’re smart, agile, and buyer-centric you stand a much better chance of spending your time on the right things — and accelerating revenue growth.”

We want to hear from you!

Do you agree the standard sales funnel model needs to be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Founder & Managing Partner

<strong>Bob Apollo</strong> is CEO of UK-based <a href="http://www.inflexion-point.com/">Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners</a>. He works with technology-based expansion-stage B2B companies, helping them to achieve market leadership through scalable sales and marketing processes that systematically identify, attract, engage, qualify, persuade, and convert more of the right sort of prospects.