How does a sales funnel work

A Sales Funnels is basically a system takes random prospects (leads) through a path to becoming paying customers and this works by creating

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Decision
4. Action. 

You may think funnel builders are basically magicians. If you’re anything like me maybe, and you want to know the psychology behind sales funnels, to know how a sales funnel actually works, then read on.

INTRODUCTION

Sales funnels have been the key to helping many brands build multi-million dollar businesses. So I want to kick off by showing you how a sales funnel actually mirrors the traditional marketing process. And did you know that there are four key steps that every successful sales funnel walks the customer through.

More on that in just a moment and read to the end because I’m also going to reveal my personal secret for guiding a lead towards a sale. But please use these powers for good sales.

Funnels are used in more modern marketing, and sure in the past people did really well with direct mail and billboards and newspaper ads. But sales funnels can actually still mirror the traditional marketing process Russell Brunson often gives this description of a funnel. 

Sales funnel is like a billboard.

He says it’s like someone sees a billboard ad for your service. When they open the door. They’re greeted by someone and then they can schedule an appointment or take action on whatever that funnel is presenting for them to do online.

Funnels can work the same way they follow a logical process of guiding your lead towards a sale and leads are nurtured through the funnel and are typically red-hot by the time that they buy at the top of the funnel.

You have a wide audience of tons of people that might be interested in what you have to offer. But the rest of the sequence in your sales page, like your copy, your hook, your headline, your bonuses and the ways that you convert your audience is going to seive that audience down to the point where you only have the best most qualified people that are going to take the next step in your sales funnel.

So do you see how that compares to the person who sees the billboard ad, they take the next step and open the door, they click through to that call to action and they look at the page. They’re greeted by someone seeing the copy on your page. And then that call to action is the equivalent of them maybe scheduling an appointment or signing up for the thing that you’re offering.

I want to hear from you. Have you ever been on a super compelling website or a sales funnel that almost effortlessly brought you along a customer journey.

Let me know what it was in the comments.

I can tell you for myself personally i’ve seen facebook ads sometimes that felt like they were speaking directly to me it’s like they knew my exact pain points, my problems, my desires.

I clicked on that ad aka the billboard and opened the door to the sales funnel then i was greeted by someone or really saw all of that sales page copy. Which further nurtured me towards believing in this product or service and then throughout the page is sprinkled with calls to action for me to actually opt in and take the next step.

Which meant they got my credit card because their marketing was just so dam good.

So those are the tactical steps that your audience walks through, but i want to share with you the four psychological steps that a sales funnel leads your viewer through.

When you have a sales funnel in place, there’s like this yellow brick road that’s laid out for your customer. 

The yellow brick road of a sales funnels:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Decision
4. Action

The first step is Awareness. This is where your lead becomes solution aware. Your offer is presented clearly to them as the answer to their problem. 

The second step is Interest after they have awareness. Maybe they find some interest in what this is.

So as a lead works their way through the sales page they become more interested in your product. 

Their resistance is lowered and they learn whether this product is right for them or not.

That third step leads them to the Decision. This is where the lead can make the mental decision to buy and the fourth step is Action. 

This is where the buyer can enter their credit card information and as good as sold.

I want you to think about that and observe your own behavior when you land on a sales page. I gave you my example of seeing a facebook ad clicking onto a page and being so intrigued by the copy feeling like they knew exactly what i needed, what i wanted and they obviously had the solution i needed.

So it is at this point that i threw my credit cards at them and couldn’t wait to buy what they have to offer.

I want you to think for yourself; what are the sales pages that have given you that emotional reaction or what are the sales pages that were so boring and hardly caught your attention. And maybe you didn’t even click on them or if you did you clicked off right away.

If you can observe your own behavior to other people’s content and sales funnels then you can see what works and what doesn’t for yourself.

That can also help you in creating your own sales funnels.

Now the proof is going to be in the pudding when it comes to your own data. We want to be able to check the metrics of how many people are landing on the sales page of those people.

How many people are clicking through?

If people are clicking through to your ad onto your page but they’re not buying, that shows us that the ad might be working.

But the sales page copy isn’t if no one’s coming to your page.

We need to work on our traffic strategies. So throughout the entire process, observe other people’s funnels and see what you can learn from them, while also comparing your own data.

I’m going to share with you my personal secret, my personal framework to help guide a lead towards the sale.

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In every successful program, product or service I’ve ever sold, I found that it all tied back to one thing, and that was by having a story selling framework installed in my content and in my funnels. So I created an acronym to help you remember every step.

The acronym is ELSA.

And yes you might think of the snow queen from frozen. Yes but for these purposes do not let it go.

ELSA stands for

EPIPHANY

LESSON

STORY

APPLICATION. 

1. The E is for Epiphany.

This is the main idea of your product. The big breakthrough. The big takeaway that you want your audience to walk away with. So when you’re creating your sales funnel, what’s that big epiphany? The big breakthrough that you want your audience to walk away with or walk towards your call to action with. If you can reverse engineer this we can make sure that everything else is designed to reach that epiphany. 

2. The L is for LESSON.

This is your specific your proprietary framework. This teaches them something. Offers value and explains to them why they need this product but instead of being boring snoozefest charlie brown teacher at the front of the classroom. Like the best educators, the best marketers are the ones that spend more time in the story. And it’s the story that humanizes you and helps you relate to your audience and builds that know-like trust factor. 

3. S is for STORY

If i just shared with you that once upon a time i used to be a dental hygienist and i was making okay money. But i was bored of my job and then all of a sudden i had a multi-million dollar business. You’d be like ‘well great that’s good for you but how does this help me’.

But if i go into the story and share with you how painstaking it was. How I hated looking at the clock every single day to be released from this job. How there was an injury in my family that meant i couldn’t go back to work for some time, and i had to get to this point in my side hustle, so that I could be able to pay the bills for myself and my family.

And that finally after trial and error and late nights and early mornings and failures, and finally reaching this epiphany of how I could grow my business with YouTube and high ticket sales. 

That might be something that maybe you’d relate to a little bit more instead of this instant before and after. You got to experience the highs and lows with me. Maybe even resonated with parts of that story yourself.

That’s what’s going to create that know-like trust factor so that when they do have the purchase decision, decide who they want to buy from. They’re going to buy from people that they believe in because they’ve been through a similar experience themselves. 

So you have your epiphany, your lesson, and your story. When you’ve gotten this far with your audience, that’s going to guide your audience down that yellow brick road to oz which is what i like to call the OFFER zone.

4. The A in elsa is for APPLICATION.

This is that powerful call to action for what to do next. It’s that actual step for your audience to take to go through from being a lead to being a paying customer.

So that is basically how a funnel works. That builds up till the actual action.

More like a reverse engineered pipe from Awareness up till specific Action.

If you’re working on a funnel right now, systeme.io is the best tool for you.

And if you’re building a funnel from scratch or from the first time, and you need it done for you with the best performing best converting funnels for you, you can click the link below to access our Digital Services

What is a sales funnel?