The B2B industry has seen substantial stagnation in recent years, and one of the most culpable areas is the trends of our sales funnels. The standard B2B sales funnel is generally over complicated and has many milestones from which prospects are more likely to step off and find another partner.
74% of millennial B2B buyers changed vendors to get greater consumer experiences. This implies a desire for B2C integration in their buyer experiences in terms of simplicity, engagement, and certain navigational options standardized in the B2C niche.
Today, we look at how you can simplify your sales funnel and optimize lead generation, transactions, and revenue. Learn how to create a simple sales funnel today.
If It Isn’t Broken, Why Must We Fix It? Why Simplify The Sales Funnel?
The B2B industry is broken [link to relevant article] as a whole, and the sales funnel is one of the main reasons why, as it’s the practice of our sales processes that make up our revenue. In their current state, B2B transactions require an expensive, time-consuming, and difficult sales process where the high burden of the cost is shared between both the buyer and the seller.
The complexity of the sales funnel, especially when compared with the standards of B2C, causes businesses to lose sales leads, increasing prospect churn, marketing efforts to land on deaf ears, or, more specifically, it results in impressions remaining as impressions forever, and this causes your company to lose out on potential efficiency as a whole.
Firstly & Lastly, Prospective Partners are Impatient
When businesses look for companies to work with, solve with, and share pain points with, they are looking for quick solutions. This is why it’s important to create an expedient, simple, and rewarding sales experience for your prospects - so that you can turn them into partners. Not just partners either. Committed partners that value and require your services.
Simplify the funnel, and you increase the chances of turning prospects into conversions, and conversions into clients. You can action this by clearly defining your sales funnel and target audience, creating relevant, high-quality content, engaging CTAs, streamlined landing pages, and contact points, and many other tactics [relevant Salesmrkt Sales Funnel link].
The Advantages of a Simple Sales Funnel
1. It Matches Customer Expectations
As evidenced earlier, customers now largely expect the same experiences as with a B2C buying process, which is gifted with a much more streamlined and simple sales funnel that B2B executives are now beginning to strive for. A simple example of online sales funnel mechanics are as follows:
- Recognition: A consumer becomes aware of a product. Let’s say it’s a pair of ventilated socks they don’t need.
- Attention: If the creatives have hit their target market squarely, and the consumer in question is in the market for new socks, then their interest peaks and they look further into the product.
- Reflection: Next, they look at reviews, consider the purchase, and decide.
- Acquisition: And finally, they make the purchase and it’s sent off to them.
Recognition, attention, reflection, and acquisition. Four points, and all that the B2C executive has to do is cater to that with engaging ads (in whatever form) and a streamlined process. The funnel is even more invaluable when it uses a flywheel strategy, but we’ll get to that shortly.
The B2B sales funnel is similar, except it has additional steps that lie between reflection and acquisition:
- Trialing: The prospect receives a free trial of the product or service.
- Negotiations: The prospect negotiates with their partners, budget, and decide whether they can benefit from it.
2. It Incorporates This Integral element of B2C
As we regularly discuss on the Salesmrkt blog, one of the most vital ways to revamp the B2B sales brand is to integrate elements of the B2C sector [link to B2C integration article], which, as you know (or if you don’t, have to know), buyers now expect. Moreover, B2B transactions so often end at the POP, which is usually the period at the end of the sales funnel. Your funnel, while remaining simple, must also extend beyond the POP.
One way in which you can achieve this is through the flywheel technique, which is designed to curate a continuous momentum of customer satisfaction, engagement, and sales growth. That’s to say, going the extra distance to ensure that your customers get the attention they need. This could include a channel whereby confirmed buyers are granted access to chats, assistance, and engaging experiences.
Prospect Expectations & How to Approach Them
When building and refining your brand, it is important to identify trends, trajectories, and expectations, and they can be deciphered through the analysis of relevant data and its trajectory (analytics) [link to data and analytics article]. Here are the key elements that prospects expect when shopping for a seller…
It is important to match standardized expectations such as these, as they are the symptoms of fluid sales process functionality. Perhaps you don’t want to follow the trends, as you don’t wish to end up like every other B2B corporation out there. However, these particular trends are important to follow, as they are based on sales funnel streamlining and functionality, and are to convenience and time efficiency, and greatly influence your company’s capacity for landing prospects.
So, fundamentally, these standards directly impact your ability to affect your revenue stream.
To make your company truly stand out from the others, you can work on innovating other integral features, such as your USPs, products, services, and team cohesion. For instance, if you don’t have unique on-demand live assistance, or on-demand services [link to Salesmrkt services] at the click of a few buttons, then this is a new and exciting venture to implement.
Creating A Simple Sales Funnel: The Steps
1. Redefine Your Sales Funnel
The first step is to look at your current sales funnel. Perhaps approach it from a buyer perspective, checking and assessing each step to decipher where it is overcomplicated, which milestones are costing you and your buyers the most, and taking detailed notes of this.
Once you know where the overwhelming complexity lies, it’s a case of redefining the steps to streamline buyers’ sales experience. The areas that require refining will be unique to your ads, SEO practices, and the functionalities of your website and social media handles. So, there is no single size to fit all here. This is a task you will have to undertake yourself, or outsource to an industry expert.
You can even look at a fully optimized competitor's simple sales funnel to see how they run, their ROI, and to emulate the best practices.
2. Streamline Landing Pages
Landing pages are one of the first things that your converted prospects will engage with, and therefore such pages have to get to the point rapidly, and in a clear and aesthetically pleasing manner. This means that all of the relevant services and products are laid bare so that those visiting your site are directed there easily, and be fully immersed by your sales process.
Bear in mind the way in which users read websites. Only 16 percent of them are reported to read them word by word, and even that seems too good to be true. Users also don’t read left to right, but in a Z. That’s to say, they will read the first line, then scan the main body of the site, and then read the bottom line. So, ensure that you make use of this likelihood.
At Salesmrkt we understand how users browse for products and services. If you wish to outsource [link to relevant services] your web copy and design, there is no greater team available, or one with a more simplified sales funnel.
3. Create Engaging CTAs
CTAs are fundamental to sales funnels, whether they are placed in your blog content, landing pages, or video presentations. As such, they should be constructed carefully and with precision.
Two tips for optimizing this. Firstly, use a verb. An example could be “Watch Now” or “Register Today”. These are immediate, concise, and instruct an action, however subconscious this may be. Such CTAs would be less effective in the present tense, such as “Watching Now…” and it would take too long to get to the point. Plus, that doesn’t work at all.
Secondly, engage the reader by using visuals [link to relevant visual optimization article] such as attractive CTA buttons, which will isolate the CTA from the main body of the text, and provide clear instruction.
Furthermore, CTAs should be unified across multiple channels. So, whatever mediums you are disseminating content through to gain prospects, make sure the CTA leads them to the relevant landing page. This creates a sense of familiarity in your users, simplifying the process even further.
4. Make Premium Content
Of course, the greatest way to ensure that your CTAs are followed is to engage your prospects with great content. B2B brand content comes in many different forms, including the following:
This is another element that buyers find consistently in their B2C buying experiences, and that they expect when buying your B2B services. So, it’s vital to implement them. Although, the content should differ in terms of delivery, tone and purpose [link to relevant article “How to Make Top-Tier B2B Content in 2024].
Regardless of the medium, the goal should be to provide unique, helpful content for your prospects to discover. Make your claims more substantive by quoting reputable statistics and studies, or words of wisdom from a relevant thought leader. This, and a creative team, is how you build integral content likely to optimize your sales leads.
Creating informative, engaging content that is immediately accessible and that is coupled with functioning CTAs, that also link to the correct landing pages and services, is the key to simplifying the sales funnel.
5.Utilize Omnichannel Marketing
Integrating a congruous B2B omnichannel experience will help with client retention and brand growth. It’s reported that 82% of suppliers opt out and look for a new vendor if they don’t have a guarantee of a high performance, or a trial and refund to be a part of the package offered.
The key with omnichannel marketing is to ensure that, like all other elements of simplifying a sales funnel, all contact points are integrated. For example, if you have a support chatbot in place on your website, the buyer can pick up where they left off in the conversation via the social media chatbot.
The best example is B2C e-commerce, which uses electronic storefronts and product listings. By using inventory management platforms, executives can sync the digital product listings with the physical inventory. With B2B, it’s a case of lining up all interactions with the resources of your company, its team members, and the various points in your sales funnel.
To exemplify this, if one of your customers signs up for your services, then every step of their customized solutions must be accounted for in the later stages. This is fundamental for your sales funnel, as buyers do not fly through your funnel straight away. They will oscillate back and forth until they make their decision.
6. Hire an Expert Team
Whether it's lack of time or staffing, if you don't have resources to create consistent outreach, a plethora of engaging content, and other elements of a simplified sales funnel as described above, then consider outsourcing this task to a team of experts [link to relevant services page] who know their business, and have proven track records in scaling brands. This will take the burden off of your back whilst optimizing various aspects of business.
Verdict
In summary, the process of sales funnel simplification is multifaceted, and could unironically become a little complex itself. But a process that feels simple and refined to a buyer, whether it’s their Amazon shopping list or a Netflix subscription, has usually had a great deal of work put into it. Browsing the web, the process should feel like nothing at all, and that’s how you know that a lot of work has gone into it.
The same is true of our sales funnels. If we want to reap the rewards, we have to put the work in now. Doing so could grant us greater profits, glowing reputations, and team cohesion.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I simplify my B2B sales funnel?
Refine each step of your sales funnel from impression to purchase, starting with lead generation points, the landing these pages go to, and ensure that you have omnichannel cohesion, and an efficient web page layout. Plus, CTAs are your friend.
Why are B2B sales funnels more complicated than B2C sales funnels?
B2B is a generally more complex process, and this is due to its nature. B2B executives want maximum value out of their prospects, and because of this, spend more time trialing and negotiating the purchase. Whereas B2C is usually a one time buy.
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