Funnel of sales: essence, significance and simple example of construction

At present, it is not difficult to produce a quality product or buy it at a wholesale, warehouse price. The greatest difficulties, as a rule, arise with its advertising and sale. In order to monitor, analyze and predict the sale of products, there are many methods and tools. One of the most popular of these is the so-called sales funnel. Excel, 1c and other similar programs allow not only to easily build it for a particular enterprise, but also to benefit from this practical advantage in business.

The concept of

In fact, any sale of products involves the transfer of a potential buyer to a real consumer, ready to exchange their money for the goods that the goods provide. The sales funnel is the embodiment of the idea that this process can be divided into several separate stages, each of which requires its own approach, skills and methods of work. All this makes it possible not only to analyze and plan the final result, but also to take into account a multitude of other factors. In general, the sales funnel is the ratio of the number of successful transactions to the number of contacts with potential buyers. At its top level, usually shows the number of initial communications with prospective customers, and on the bottom - the number of sales held.

Relevance

The sales funnel is of tremendous practical value. In addition, it gives a visual representation of the process of selling a product, with its help it is possible to make a transition from a passive sale of products to an active one, having built on its basis an appropriate scheme for motivating managers, who are directly engaged in this. The sales funnel allows you to identify and eliminate the weak stages of sales not only for the entire department, but separately for each seller. And this, in turn, allows you to concentrate on their elimination and ultimately improve the performance of your work.

Building Example

Suppose that we have a firm that sells toys. Then for the sales department, you can simulate the following sales funnel:

1. Identification of potential buyers in a specific area. Let's say this number is 1000 people.
2. First contact with future customers. Since not all will be contacted during the reporting period (business trips, illnesses, etc.), this number will be less. For example, it turned out to call 900 people.
3. Definition of interested buyers. It would be naive to assume that everyone who first hears about tempting offers will immediately rush to shop. Some people will miss the information received by the ears, and the others will have an interest and desire to receive additional information. Suppose that we have 300 people like this.
4. Discussion of the price. On this important and difficult for many sellers, the stage is to dispel all doubts about the future purchase. Developed even a funnel of questions in sales, which recommends building communication in a certain sequence. At this stage, a number of potential buyers will be eliminated, say, 100 people. As a result, we have 200 potential customers.
5. Signing of the contract. If the customer believes that the price is acceptable, this does not mean that he is ready to make a purchase. Perhaps, at the moment he does not need this product or does not like some of the nuances in the contract. After this stage, perhaps 150 people will agree to sign documents from the original thousand.
6. First shipment. It happens that the buyer for some reason is wasting time. There is nothing to be done - we still have to make efforts to the buyer agreed to pick up his order. There will be even fewer of them - 130 people.
7. Payment. The quality of the goods may not like, and they can be returned. Also do not forget about the probability of the appearance of accounts receivable. One way or another, there will be even less payouts on time. Let this number be 100 people.

As we can see, our sales funnel makes it possible to reveal that at the stage of interest we have the greatest problems, which means that it is here that first of all we need to introduce new methods and methods of work.