Businesses don’t survive without customers, and customers don’t become customers without traversing through the sales funnel at least in part. It’s as simple and as critical as that. But building a sales funnel can be easier said than done if you’re the founder of an emerging technology services company. Unlike most other businesses, ETS sales funnels can be surprisingly complex to understand. In this blog post, we’ll go over the fundamentals of ETS sales funnels, their structure, the different types of tactics that work at each stage, and how these funnels differ from traditional funnels.
In its simplest representation, an ETS sales funnel maps the journey a customer takes from the initial discovery of a pain point to the final purchase. In reality, this journey isn’t always linear and may not even be singular - the same customer can be at different stages for different services. But there is a general sequence or structure we can identify.
When working with emerging technologies, your marketing will focus on this area. This is because customers may not understand or may poorly understand emerging technologies, and you’ll have to spend more effort educating them about their problems.
At this stage, your goal is to help the customer understand more about their own problem and get yourself on their radar as the expert who can deliver a possible solution. You must boost your visibility and capture their interest. Remember, people won’t buy from you just because they’ve heard of you - but they won’t buy from you at all if they haven’t heard of you.
While working on Awareness, you’ll likely invest more in SEO, paid advertising, social media content, blogging, and earned media placements.
Once you’ve successfully captured your target customer’s interest, you can transition into the consideration stage. This stage is marked by a higher understanding of both their problem and your ability to deliver a solution.
Now is the time for your marketing & sales team to focus on establishing credibility. This is the part of the funnel where you can start to nudge prospects towards conversion, so your conversations will begin to shift away from simply helping them understand their problem towards helping them understand the solution you provide.
Key tactics for Consideration include organizing webinars, sharing case studies and whitepapers and, if appropriate, arranging product/solution demos or even discovery calls.
The bottom of the funnel is the final decision - the purchase - but a service business’s relationship with the customer cannot end there. The “product” you deliver is the service, so the post-purchase experience and the loyalty stage are also critical elements of your sales process.
Your goal here is to close the deal, and you can use a host of tactics to do so—from testimonials to personalized messaging, free trials, and special offers.
But once you move past Conversion, remember to focus on your customer’s experience during the Loyalty stage as well. The two most important ways to ensure a positive outcome are your ability to deliver successfully and communicate effectively.
ETS sales funnels deviate from traditional B2B and B2C sales funnels in several ways:
Unlike e-commerce or traditional B2B sales, emerging technology services often require months (or even a few quarters) of deliberation before a purchase is made. A traditional B2B sales journey can have as many as eight touchpoints before a sale is made, so make sure this is something you've accounted for in financial planning. This is also another good reason to keep in touch with qualified leads in the long run, even if a sale doesn't immediately materialize.
Enterprise markets are particularly notorious for this, but even outside of them, an organization can require many different stakeholders to sign off before making an investment in an emerging technology. Decision-making in ETS often involves multiple departments, technical experts, and C-level executives. Tailor your sales approach to address the concerns of each stakeholder to avoid getting blocked.
Given the uncertainty associated with emerging technologies, buyers require significant proof and assurances before investing. Be prepared to back up your sales pitches with proof of concept and ample evidence. This is another area that benefits from having the right partners on board—implicit trust in them works in your favor as a degree of implicit trust in you.
Many ETS solutions are disruptive technologies that require extensive customer education before conversion. Your sales funnel will have to deliver more than a hard sell. Expect to educate your customer about any aspect of the technology at any point in the funnel, even though typically, this is heavily emphasized at the top of the funnel.
There are several strategies to optimize your sales funnel, and some may be more applicable than others, depending on what challenges you’re facing. But in general, there are a few best practices to ensure the health of your sales funnel and to help you optimize it over time.
ETS sales are a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure your team does regular personalized follow-ups wherever possible. Review your content from time to time to ensure it matches your target customer profile’s pain points, and see if you can enhance the quality of leads’ experience with your brand to keep them engaged.
Track everything. Your analytics are a vital, often real-time window into your leads’ behavior and experience in different parts of the funnel. Set aside time to review key metrics regularly so you can adjust strategies and correct course accordingly.
The top of the funnel is typically much more marketing-centric than the bottom, which is sales-centric. Regardless, it takes every part of the funnel to work seamlessly together to deliver the kind of smooth experience that results in a sale. This means your marketing and sales teams must be closely aligned, with a clear understanding of their responsibilities and handover points.
Building a sales funnel requires a strategic grasp of your customer's needs and the solutions you deliver, supported by a deeper understanding of the customer journey so you can deliver the expertise they need from you and guide them toward a decision.
By understanding and optimizing each stage of your sales funnel, your emerging technology services company can not only boost conversions but also nurture long-term relationships that drive mutual growth as the emerging technology you work with is adopted by the mainstream. That’s why this month’s theme will focus on improving your ETS sales funnels. Follow our blog for more!
At Vixul, we spend a large part of our time reviewing the forecasts created by the founders of our portfolio companies. It is amazing for us to see our founders mature as executives and be able to answer questions they couldn't in the past. Unfortunately, most founders struggle with these issues until we point them in the right direction. We believe the lack of guidance on forecasting is a primary issue for early-stage tech services founders.
That's why we're working on an eBook with detailed instructions on how to set up forecasts for sales pipelines. This will help you plan your new year with better foresight. The book will be free for people on our mailing list when it is published, so please subscribe now to ensure you receive it.