Should Sales Funnels Really be Called Sales Funnels?

Today we’re going to be diving into a super important topic and one that is near and dear to my heart. Sales Funnels.

Let’s start with, what is a sales funnel?

I looked up the actual definition for this. A sales funnel is the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products.

Sounds really simple right? Not so much.

I love sales funnels. When I first learned about them I started dabbling a little, learning websites and where people flow from, but there was always one thing that didn’t really fit with me…the term sales funnel.

When you start out with your funnels, everyone gets the same image. A picture of a funnel broken down into stages and at the bottom are all these people who purchased. Like this…

It makes it seem so neat, clean, and simple. But in reality, there are so many more things you have to pay attention to than just this nice easy funnel.

If that is all you’re focusing on, you are missing a lot.

For example, most people have ‘leaky’ funnels. A leaky funnel is a funnel where you have people falling off the sides. You want to grab these people and bring them back into your funnel. This is why I really don’t like this term, IT’S NOT A FUNNEL.

It seems so misleading to me to just call it a funnel and have that classic funnel image.  It makes it seem like its just 4 simple steps and that’s all you have to do.

No.

Your sales funnel is not just your pages. It’s not just your ads or links. Along with those things, it includes your website, your entire E-mail strategy (more email than you can even think of), your social strategy, and more. It’s so many more aspects than just these pages you put together in this nice neat order that lead people to purchase your product.

So, here are a few things that I really like to think about when I think of building sales funnels.

Start with where people are coming in. That’s usually an opt-in or an offer that shows value. Then you lead them to a thank you page that asks to go to another place like a Facebook page (like us on Facebook/subscribe on YouTube) or it can be an up-sell like a small 10 to 50 dollar course, product, guide, video series…whatever it is. Then if they click there they go to the next step.

Well, what if they don’t click to the next step? You capture all these people in your lead magnet to go to the next step where your offer is, but what about all the people who don’t purchase?

This is why I like to look at it as a sales web or a bit more fun as a ‘choose your own adventure’ book like the ones we used to read as kids. That’s kind of how you have to think of it as you’re putting everything together.

People are going to do things you can’t plan for, but you have to try to figure out all of the ways people can come into your business and go away from it and how you can recapture them again.  When you lay it all out like that, the term sales funnel doesn’t work.

So I propose that everyone start calling it a sales web or a sales map. There are so many more things that go into it than just the 5 step funnel you made in ClickFunnels thinking that’s all you have to worry about.

Who’s with me?

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