![\"Sales](\"https:\/\/accruemarketing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/sales_funnels_customer_journeys.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\nWhat Are They and Why Do You Need Them?<\/h2>\n
In simplest terms, sales funnels drive revenue growth and customer journeys drive earnings growth. Sales funnels are about client acquisition. Customer journeys are about retention and client development.<\/p>\n One could argue that sales and marketing, comes down to designing, implementing, and refining these two critical processes. Unfortunately, the reason so many sales and marketing efforts fail is the complete absence of both frameworks.<\/p>\n Yup, it\u2019s a bitter pill. But it\u2019s time to hold your nose and swallow. There\u2019s a reason your sales and marketing performance sucks. The message is likely all about you, and nobody cares except you and your mom.<\/p>\n Who you are and what your story is, are irrelevant to people until you address their needs. People only care about themselves. When they are looking for a product or service, they tend to start out being superficial, judgemental, impatient, tight-fisted and distracted. Your job is to meet people where they are and enroll them in the possibility you represent.<\/p>\n This mindset needs to be your sales and marketing mantra. If you\u2019re not focused on your customer\u2019s needs, you might as well flush your marketing dollars down the drain.<\/p>\n The real challenge is, you want your sales and marketing to be about you.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sorry to tell you, it\u2019s time to give up that idea. Get over it and move on. It\u2019s not about you. Sales and marketing are about helping people get their needs met.<\/p>\n The goal is to make it easy for people to find you and as mentioned, understand the possibility you represent. It\u2019s about supporting their decision to buy, then making it simple for them to complete a purchase. Once they\u2019ve completed their first purchase, the work of turning customers into long-term clients begins.<\/p>\n Probably not. It\u2019s more likely you talk about yourself; your company, your products or even you personally. You want to tell people everything about your products. It\u2019s all about what it is, what it does and how it works. These are the features and the sizes and colours it comes in. Your customer\u2019s needs are largely absent from your marketing and sales communication.<\/p>\n Have a look at almost anyone\u2019s marketing material and it\u2019ll be all about them.<\/p>\n It gets even worse when a client decides to buy because often, it takes an incredible effort to complete the purchase. Their journey through your business is entirely unscripted and up to them to navigate. There\u2019s no map to lead the way. Why? Because you haven\u2019t mapped out a path for people to follow yet.<\/p>\n The alternative is you flipping the process around and make your business about meeting your target client\u2019s needs. You script the experience you want clients to have with you.<\/p>\n This is not just about the first transaction either. This is about designing the relationship you intend to create with ideal clients over time.<\/p>\n This approach is called Customer Centricity<\/a>. It\u2019s not a new approach; it\u2019s been practised for decades.<\/p>\n Customer centricity is just uncommon because the industrial revolution was all about mass-produced consumer goods. This drove mass marketing messages designed to influence patterns of consumption. It was all about brand preference and product sales. Marketing still has a hangover from the last 100+ years of mass marketing.<\/p>\n In simplest terms, customer-centricity is about shifting your focus from what you sell to whom you serve. You make your business about being who your clients need to solve their problems.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a radical shift from our mass marketing roots, but it\u2019s not a revolutionary idea either. It\u2019s simply a choice. Consider these questions:<\/p>\n Transactional profit models are based on single and repeat sales. Relationship-based profit models are based on the lifetime value of client relationships. How will your profit model work?<\/p>\n The practice of customer-centricity involves six steps:<\/p>\n Your sales funnel begins when you make first contact with a prospect. First contact could be through advertising, search engines, social media, direct sales, or an in-person meeting. It does not matter how it happens.\u00a0It begins when you gain the prospect\u2019s attention, you earn some trust, then incite them to act. You want them to identify themselves.\u00a0You need their name and permission to follow up with them. Ideally, you want a sale, but a name and email address will do for now.<\/p>\n You use your sales funnel for converting that first contact event into a paying customer. There is usually some low-risk, often free or very low-cost offer, ideally with a high perceived value, that is easy to say yes to. Typical offers include free downloads, free events, free trials or a chance to win something of value.<\/p>\n Once you have their name, their contact info and their permission, you get busy following up. You auto follow-up by email. Then follow-up by phone. You send them something of value to aid their decision making. Then you encourage a social follow and to join your mailing list. Design your sales funnel to persist for several weeks or months while you prepare the prospect for the first paid purchase. The sales funnel continues through the first sale with welcome messages, support, how-to\u2019s, acknowledgement, offers for training, upgrades, feedback requests and more.<\/p>\n The sales funnel needs to generate a positive experience. From a sales perspective, funnels are all about increasing conversion rates, reducing unit costs per sale and reducing the average sales cycle times.<\/p>\n Your customer\u2019s journey starts with your sales funnel experience. If your business is transactional, the goal is to generate repeat sales\u2014ideally larger and more frequent sales at that. Grocery stores are great examples of this. After you make your first purchase and join their loyalty program, you start receiving their weekly fliers and emails. They want you to start buying gas from them as well as alcohol and pharmaceuticals. How can they get you to buy more stuff more often?\u00a0Some call this brand loyalty, but it\u2019s mostly about fostering preference and re-enforcing purchase habits.<\/p>\n For example:<\/strong> If your business is relationship-based, you do the same things, except you get to learn about your clients and lead them where they need to go. If you\u2019re a dentist for example, you want the client\u2019s whole family coming to see you until you retire. It\u2019s the same thing for GP\u2019s, chiropractors, hair salons, and financial advisors.<\/p>\n What\u2019s different is it\u2019s not just about repeat purchases. It\u2019s about an escalation of trust and support. You\u2019re working to lead people down a constructive path that serves their best interests. You\u2019re working to become a trusted advisor and confidant.\u00a0You can accomplish this in an unscripted way, or you can anticipate your client\u2019s needs long before they\u2019re aware of them. You do this by aligning your products and services by following the lifecycle needs of clients.<\/p>\n A good example of this is financial advisors.<\/strong> Their business model starts when you get your first real job and have a bit of money to invest. Then they move you into health insurance and tax planning. They escalate when you start having kids by getting you to think about life insurance and wills, followed by pre-retirement planning and on through to estate planning. They\u2019ve built a business model designed to support clients through a 60+ year relationship.<\/p>\n How long are you planning to work with your clients? Have you anticipated their lifecycle needs? What would it look like if you did?\u00a0Mapping your customer\u2019s journey through your business is all about the escalation of value for clients and earnings for your company. It\u2019s about crafting long-term win\/win scenarios.<\/p>\n Sales funnels and customer journey mapping are both about maximizing sales, scripting customer experiences, and reducing the cost of sale or client acquisition. Customer journey mapping is also about client retention and earnings growth through the escalation of value.<\/p>\n Ideally, both mechanisms are used together as one extended sales and relationship development framework.<\/p>\n When you start thinking about your clients and designing your business around meeting their needs, it becomes increasingly obvious why people ignore your marketing messages. If you\u2019re talking about yourself, it\u2019s challenging to be relevant to people who\u2019re fixated on their own needs and goals.<\/p>\n If you want your marketing to work, you need to move all the messaging about you into the background. Don\u2019t worry; you\u2019ll get your chance to talk about yourself. However, you\u2019ll need to wait until your clients get curious and want to know more about you.<\/p>\n The point is to start with your client\u2019s wants and needs. Develop a whole system around meeting their needs. Then, make sure you\u2019re as authentic and transparent as possible when clients go looking to learn more.<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to learn about sales funnels, customer journeys, offer hierarchies and customer-centric marketing, please take advantage of all the free content<\/a> we\u2019ve prepared. There are nearly 20 free marketing eBooks on our website to download. We\u2019ve also prepared 40+ posts like this on our blog and written a book called BEING Profitable<\/a>.<\/p>\n The book is designed for beginners. It breaks the marketing and business development process down into three phases and twenty logical steps. The goal is to help you see marketing as a system and understand how to set up your earnings growth system. We hope you\u2019ll take advantage of our content to help you Master Marketing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Are They and Why Do You Need Them? \u00a0Print This Post In simplest terms, sales funnels drive revenue growth and customer journeys drive earnings growth. Sales funnels are about client acquisition. Customer journeys are about retention and client development. One could argue that sales and marketing, comes down to designing, implementing, and refining these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[13092,51755,38765,38764,15340,4374,1329,51515],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-116738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-customer","tag-customer-centric","tag-customer-journeys","tag-customer-centricity","tag-funnels","tag-journeys","tag-sales","tag-sales-funnels"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Print](\"https:\/\/accruemarketing.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-print\/images\/printer_famfamfam.gif\" "\\"Print")
<\/a>\u00a0Print This Post<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/header>\nComplete Absence Sounds Harsh<\/h3>\n
What\u2019s In It For Me (Your Clients)?<\/h3>\n
Does This Sound Like Your Marketing?<\/h3>\n
What\u2019s the Alternative?<\/h3>\n
What is Customer-Centricity?<\/h3>\n
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Making the Shift to Customer-Centricity<\/h3>\n
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Sales Funnels Are About Closing First Sales<\/h3>\n
Your Sales Funnel is Your Conversion Mechanism<\/h3>\n
A Customer\u2019s Journey is All About Lifetime Value<\/h3>\n
Both Scenarios Help You Lower Costs and Maximize ROI<\/h3>\n
Marketing is Not About You<\/h3>\n
Where to Begin?<\/h3>\n