Have you built a b2b sales funnel? You have a sales pipeline, but you are still unable to convert leads into revenue. You create engaging content, provide crystal-clear call-to-actions, and your lead forms ask for a few details. In short, you are following best practices but are not generating enough revenue. You don’t have to worry because you are doing everything correctly apart from nurturing leads through a watertight sales funnel.

Successful companies have effective sales funnels in place. A sales funnel helps a business optimize the way of reaching the right audiences and serving them valuable content at the most appropriate time. Companies that follow a conversion-centric sales funnel will identify more qualified leads versus businesses that still rely on non-optimized processes.

When you invest time to build a sales funnel, you strengthen your relationship with clients and eventually minimize the cost per lead. Are you interested in building your sales funnel but don’t know where to start? This blog will be your go-to guide in helping you build a result-driven B2B sales funnel.

A road map for building a B2B sales funnel

The concept of B2B sales funnels may not be new to your sales and marketing squads. Chances are, you may already have determined key steps in the journey of your ideal buyer. However, your buyer’s journey is still unable to deliver you the expected returns. A suboptimal buyer journey may also confuse you where the next big opportunity lies or where actions have to be taken for improving the sales process.

The traditional five-stage B2B sales funnel has served businesses for a long time. There is no denying that this age-old sales funnel is outdated because the B2B customer base has undergone a sea change. The customers, today, take a multi-layered and complex journey while deciding their next business partner. Unlike previous generations, today’s B2B buyers can have millions of websites and reviews before their eyes at one swipe. That is why a conventional B2B sales funnel will not address the requirements of a digital business.

Capture customer attention

Customers, today, spend only a short amount of time exploring different options. On average, a customer who is in the exploration-and-awareness phase will just spend 15 seconds on your business website scanning your services and products. If you wait until they are ready to buy, you will miss incredible opportunities. Rather, you should start focusing on building awareness much before your customers even know that they would require your products. You have to make sure that when their pain points come up, your customers know you are a solution provider.

By designing content according to buyer personas that you would like to convert, you will ensure you provide them the most relevant information. How would you know what your prospects require from you even before they understand their needs? You would simply gather data from your current leads via the request for proposals or RFPs; also, you could analyze the conversion rates and all the resources that your existing consumers consume.

Once you start to develop content that is devoured by your leads, offer valuable lead magnets or any other market incentives, you will motivate your prospects to take note of your presence. Eventually, they will begin to trust your credibility and willingly share their email addresses. Afterward, you can take steps toward engaging with your target audiences via email drip campaigns that would highlight your services and expertise.

Strengthen relationships with customers

Consistently showing your knowledge helps your business leads always stick with you at every stage of the sales funnel. As per a report, a business should showcase its expertise up to five times before leads start trusting it.

If you remain inconsistent in positioning your offerings in front of your audiences, they will never think of you when the time to make a purchase comes. However, it can be a challenge to encourage your sales team to generate content for prospects at such an early stage. That is because the ROI of such content initiatives may not be obvious. In fact, many visitors will not be ready to buy from your business in the very first interaction; instead, they would require more nurturing.

Similar to the content creation initiatives you will take in the awareness stage, the best way of building strong relationships with prospects would require you to execute drip email campaigns. In a drip email marketing strategy, you can send your leads interesting and engaging content that will educate them, inform their decision-making process, and establish brand authority.

Build a positive first impression

In the world of B2B sales funnels, the first impression counts the most. When qualified leads are all set to go down your sales pipeline, a sales team should demonstrate that they understand their pain points. To get the hang of all the pain points your prospects may have, a sales team should go back to the prospect surveys, RFPs, metric analyses it did in the first stage.

The lessons the team will learn from analyzing the data gathered at the first—awareness—stage will help it understand a prospect’s top challenges. A report points out that those businesses whose sales reps focus on solving a problem of a consumer during the initial call will likely see a massive success rate

Based on the analyses of the data collected in the awareness stage, your sales team will have to come up with an engaging script for the first call. The script should be as unique as the challenges faced by prospects.

Nurture the leads till the end

When you have had a series of promising emails and calls with the prospects, you will likely go easy. At this point, you may feel that the prospects are ready to convert on their own. However, it is this approach only that has cost business leads worth millions of dollars.

In fact, more than 45 percent of larger purchases are generally made by a nurtured lead who has been supported till the closing phase. It makes sense to not leave a lead to fend for themselves. You can always support your leads till the last few miles of your sales funnel by reconfirming commitments and keeping the relationship secured.

Engage with your prospects continually right from the first point of contact to the closing phase through follow-up calls and emails. That way, you will raise your chances of conversion and create a lasting and positive relationship with your customers.

Stay in touch even after the close

This is where most of the modern B2B sales funnels are different from the classic ones. According to the more conventional five-stage model, the team will abandon its efforts once the prospect gets converted into a customer.

However, by adopting this attitude, you will downplay the importance of repeat businesses and customer referrals. Research points that over 80 percent of customers seamlessly convert only because they were referred by a colleague or a business associate.

Besides, the referrals that come from existing customers are likely to convert without much effort. Your B2B clients know their industry and peers best. That is why when you nurture your relationship with clients, you will nurture the leads with fewer efforts and a higher chance of conversions.

Is building a b2b sales funnel taking a toll on your resources?

Do you find the process of creating your own sales funnel overwhelming? Do you lack the expertise and time to build an ROI-boosting sales funnel from scratch? If yes, then you will require a team of experienced sales development reps or SDRs and lead gen experts who can modernize your sales funnel.

Here is where LeadJen comes in.

When you bring LeadJen’s team of outsourced SDRs on board, you will get actionable lead gen and sales strategies to help you get qualified leads and successfully close more sales. This team harnesses the latest technology stack to facilitate the working culture without compromising on transparency and quality.

Because of its deep industry expertise, LeadJen has risen as a reliable lead gen and SDR outsourcing partner. Talk to one of our experts and get the sales talent to accelerate business growth and boost revenue.