C5.005 (Inside the Customer) A SALES FUNNEL BASED ON CONVERSATIONS - WILLIAM EASTMAN

Marketing & Sales is the easiest part of a business to understand: you make people aware of your existence and offer, you help them identify why they need you, and how your solution is their best choice.
 
INTRODUCTION
We are exchanging weeks 4 and 5. I have an incredible interview for Show 4 Buyers Are Out There - Get Them To Raise Their Hand. Tim Fitzpatrick of Rialto Marketing will be joining us for the full hour. 

Today we jump ahead to the sales funnel and discuss both a generic model for understanding how it works and our own version we use at the station.
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OBJECTIVES

1. Understand how critical it is to have designated sales funnel to measure, manage, and forecast sales.
2. How we converted the industry standard to fit our industry

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
The model we use has been an industry standard for the last 50 years: Qualified Leads become Suspects who become Prospects whom buy and become Customers and post sale Support. More importantly it is where we started, in the TO DO section I will explain what we morphed it into.

• Qualified Leads: a measure of marketing effectiveness, they are potential customers you targeted (based on your perfect customer profile) to find  - who is making a buying decision in the immediate future and financially capable of paying for it;
• Suspects: based on your initial contact, they are potential customers interested beyond kicking the tires and want to discuss it further to arrive at the right decision;
• Prospects: discussing benefits, features, and terms – potential customers have moved beyond being interested and have placed themselves in the closing process;
• Customers: they have made a purchase and you are about to deliver or in the delivering process;
• Alignment: our last step is to make sure, because our offer can be complicated, the customer has realistic expectations of what happens now.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO
Identify (ACK)

• Aware: ongoing marketing, organic & free, surround them with information that establishes the brand and an understanding of the offer; create qualified leads and start a conversation
• Connect: response to qualified lead reach out and establish a relationship to move them to suspect status
• Know: understand their situation - is the issue an unrealized aspiration or a pain point?

Solve (PES)

• Persona: build on knowledge of the suspect to understand how they make buying decisions; move into the prospect status
• Educate: surround them with information that makes them more intelligent consumers of your products & services PLUS inoculates them against the competition
• Sale: you have demonstrated concern for their needs and credibility on the issues driving their behavior - close the deal by providing a solution.

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