In the workspace, the best way to get ahead is to work smarter, not harder. If you or your employees spend too much time repeating mundane tasks, your team will burn out and waste time you could be spending on growing your business. One of the key ways to improve productivity is to streamline the intake process. And why is that so important? Because the benefits are twofold. You’ll not only waste less time, but you’ll improve your sales funnel in the process.
What is the Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel is basically the journey your prospects travel on their way to choose a service or product to buy. There are many steps in the buyer’s process, and the road isn’t always a straight line. Sometimes prospects fall out of the sales funnel, or head back to the top.
What if your sales funnel has holes in it? Missed calls, disconnected emails, or delayed responses could be causing you to lose sales. Streamlining your intake process and focusing on some small changes could patch those holes in your sales funnel and help you close more deals.
Maximize Your Intake Process
Once you’ve got a consumer in the sales funnel, how can you best keep them there and moving towards conversion? Your intake process encompasses any time spent communicating with a prospect, including phone calls, emails, and meetings. Here’s how you can maximize your sales funnel and intake process:
Know Your Audience
Save your sales team time and effort and increase conversion rates by honing down on the right prospect. Knowing your ideal audience, whether by age, demographic, location, buying habits, or interests can help ensure you target candidates that are interested in what you offer.
But that’s not enough. Knowing your audience is just the first step in improving your intake process. Next, you have to choose how you will target them. Is your ideal audience on social media? Do they prefer direct mail? Are they interested in webinars?
Which brings us to our next point…
Test Multiple Channels
Get your name out there! The more marketing channels you test, the most leads you can locate. Multichannel marketing is responsible for a 250% higher purchase and engagement rate than single-channel marketing campaigns. Does that mean every business should be on all social platforms, all search engines, and all billboards? Definitely not.
Consider your ideal audience, and research what platforms they use most. And create your strategy based on where you’re most likely to find your ideal candidate.
Create Convincing Content
Brand identity is a must. Optimizing your sales funnel means building relationships with your consumers. Consistent tone, voice, image, and brand identity can help people connect with your business and engage more.
When on social media, share items of interest that encourage likes, shares, and comments. Ensure emails are timely, informational, and beneficial to the recipient. Design direct mail pieces that are personal and memorable.
Use Strong CTAs
Are your call-to-actions (CTAs) moving people to action? Or are they leaving your audience confused? Or non-committal? Regularly review your landing pages for clarity and urgency. And run tests on what works best for your audience. Will “Download Your Free Guide Now” get more click-throughs than “Download”? There’s only one way to find out!
Personalize Your Outreach
80% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that provide personalized experiences. Your customers want to be seen as individuals, not just a number. More than ever, consumers are looking for personalized service. So, make sure to give it to them! Use personalization whenever possible, highlight recent purchases or places you’ve connected with them before, and create drip campaigns that help your consumers feel noticed.
Save Time and Money
When your intake process and sales funnel are working in tandem, your business will gain clients faster and easier. And what business doesn’t want that? If your business can benefit from customer acquisition to help streamline your intake process, our marketing consultants can provide you with ideal, interested prospects.
Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.
