Leaks in the Sales Funnel

In the sales world, the process of pursuing, gaining and keeping paying customers is often called a sales funnel. As many businesses face leaner-than-normal times, the importance of tending to your sales funnel has never been greater.

Yet, when times are tough, many businesses neglect their sales funnel. Critical mistake! Lack of focus on your sales funnel is bound to create substantial holes in the sales process — holes that leak prospects, customers and company profits.

In the next four issues of eAdvisor, we'll examine four areas that are vulnerable to leaks in the sales funnel — and how and why to remedy each one.

Building wallet share

In "Five Ways to Earn Customer Loyalty," authors Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy explain: "One of the most important elements in improving financial performance is getting customers to allocate a larger share of their wallets to the firm. A McKinsey study found that focusing on share of wallet had a 10 times greater impact than focusing on retention alone."

Thus, it's not enough to simply gain customers, nor even retain customers. It's imperative to expand your existing customer relationships so that you get more of your customers' business — and a larger share of their budgets.

As an added bonus, it's is easier to sell to existing customers than to find new ones. Educating customers about your business and industry creates repeated opportunities for:

• Building Customer Loyalty — Customers feel they have a relationship with your company, not your competitors.
• Creating Up-Sell Opportunities — When you can sell add-on products and services to customers, you increase the dollar amount an existing customer is investing in your company versus your competitors.

Leaking opportunities to up-sell

When you're considering your opportunities to up-sell, don't assume your satisfied customers will automatically return to you. Why? Because there's a good chance they don't know you have what they need.

For example, say you're in the logistics business. You may have a customer who regularly comes to you for product shipping. But when that customer needs warehousing services, he may turn to a competitor simply because he doesn't know you also do warehousing.

If you don't educate and regularly remind your customers about your services, you may never know how many opportunities — and dollars — you've lost.

Communication is key

So, how do you encourage customers to do more business with you without bombarding them with expensive promotional materials?

Among the most reliable, cost-effective and non-invasive ways to establish informative, consistent communication with current customers is your company eNewsletter. In a single professional eNewsletter send, you have the ability to:

• unveil new products or services
• highlight existing products or services
• supply case studies demonstrating how a product or service has benefited a current customer
• announce product or service awards, or company accolades
• offer incentives or discounts to existing customers

… and much more!

eNewsletters are a versatile tool for educating customers and are widely considered a welcome form of communication among customers. According to a Neilsen Norman Group scientific study on email newsletter usability:

"Sixty-nine percent of users said that they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter, and most users said a newsletter had become part of their routine. Very few other promotional efforts can claim this degree of customer buy-in."

In even the best of times, finding new customers is a challenge; in a down economy, it's a struggle. Now is the best time to refocus your efforts on your existing customers.

Our next issue of eAdvisor will look at ways eNewsletters can help companies avoid leaking customers (and profits) altogether.

In the meantime, find out more about how a professional eNewsletter can help keep your company's sales funnel flowing. Contact the professionals at Proven Systems at (800) 720-5398 or info@provensystems.com.

Get a no-obligation evaluation of your current email newsletter marketing practices.

Contact us by: Email: info@provensystems.com Phone: 800.720.5398 Web: www.provensystems.com