How to Diagnose and Cure Your Leaky Sales Funnel

Lately we’ve been working on something to help improve and streamline our sales funnel here at
Measure Marketing, and it’s really gotten me to thinking about how to keep an eye on this essential part of your business. You simply can’t ignore your funnel. At the end of the day, it’s what will keep you, your company, and the employees that rely on you, afloat. It’s your job to spot those leaks before they sink you. The best way to do so is to examine your funnel step by step, and to know what a leak looks like at each step. But first, how do you identify a leak?

All About Analytics

I won’t go too far into detail about analytics, because we’ve actually already got a blog out about
why you should consider using Google Analytics. But I will say this, this tool specifically has a sales funnel function that you can play with and customize to the steps in your funnel. Once you get it set up properly, you can see any problems popping up in real-time in every step of your process.

When you find the issues, what do you do for each step?

Awareness

You’ve gotten someone to your page. They know you exist. Good! But if you’ve got a leak at this stage, they come to your page and don’t convert. Or worse, they bounce and hurt your page’s rankings. Some good ways to fix this issue are:

• Trying a new design for your page. It may not be as attractive as you think, it could be too busy, or it may be running too slowly. Nothing encourages bounce like sub-par optics, visual clutter, or a sluggish load time.
• Targeting the right pain points. Maybe you’re not actually addressing what your potential customer’s need.
• Clarifying your CTA. Visitors can’t convert if they don’t know what they have to do to convert.
• Ensuring your CTA is easily accessible, preferably from any page of your site. They can’t convert if they can’t find where they’re supposed to do so.
• Earn their trust with testimonials. You can’t expect someone to simply take your word on your product. You’re not exactly an unbiased party when it comes to the value of your offering.
• Making the conversion process simple. Don’t ask for too much information or time from them upfront.

Interest

The customer has converted in some way and they’re willing to consider you. You know that you solve a pain point for them. You’ve clearly demonstrated your value. Despite all this, for some reason they keep disappearing seemingly into thin air while you’re trying to onboard them. If you’re leaky here, you might:

• Have an overly complicated onboarding process. They haven’t fully committed to you yet, they’re not necessarily ready to fully put in the work for you. Plus, no one likes being confused, especially when money is on the table.
• Not be communicating properly. Check-in with your prospect regularly at this stage (without being annoying, of course).
• Be hard to handle. Your product may just be hard to implement. You have to educate heavily if this is the case. Speak as plainly as you can while still providing the right information. If your customer can’t imagine how they’d use your product or service, you’ve lost them.

Decision Making

Your prospect has continued to stay engaged throughout the time they’ve spent with whatever trial or preliminary offer you have for them. But you find that after this point, you keep losing them. Your attempts to contact them go ignored. You’ve been ghosted. But why?

• Your competition already had them sold. It could be your prices can’t match your competitor’s, but it may boil down to simply not properly demonstrating your value. Price may not matter to your customers if they believe you’re the best around at what you do.
• The way to seal the deal may not be clear. If you haven’t specifically stated what you need from them to finish up the process and make the deal final, the deal may not happen at all.
• You may have let them sit for too long. People get busy, and as long as you’re not constantly hounding them to finish up, a reminder or a follow-up may be greatly appreciated. If they forget about you, then you leave a chance for them to simply lose interest or to find something they think is better.

Keep Your Bridge Sturdy

Getting people to your page is just the first step in their journey to becoming your customer. And it is so important that you remember that it’s a series of steps, not just one big leap, that brings them to be your customer.

Another way to look at this process is as a bridge of sorts.

Each step of the process is a piece of that bridge, and if any part has a hole in it, the lead can’t get to the other side and become a customer. They fall through the cracks.

Analytics are the engineers that make sure the bridge stays healthy and helps identify problems as they arise.

You and your team are the construction crew that fix those problems.

Go out there, put on your hard hats, and get that bridge fixed so your leads can cross the gap and become happy customers!