Research Paper: How to Build Effective Sales Funnels for a Coaching Business

Research Paper By Mukesh Sharma
(Executive Coach, INDIA)

What Is A Sales Funnel?

We make use of the metaphor of a sales funnel (wide at the very top, narrow at the end) to monitor the sales process.
Towards the top of this funnel you’ve got ‘unqualified prospects’ – the people who you believe may need your Coaching service, but to whom you’ve never spoken. At the end of this funnel, many delivery and sales steps after, you’ve got those who’ve received the service and have also purchased it.

The metaphor of a funnel can be utilized because prospects drop out of different stages of an extended sales process. Using the sales funnel, and by calculating the amount of leads at every point of the procedure, you are able to predict the amount of prospects who’ll, over time, become clients.

What is the Sales Process?

To attract these visitors, you need the following Sales Process. The entire process is web-based and has few key components. These are:

1. A Lead Capture Page or a Squeeze Page
2. An opt-in form in this squeeze page where the visitor can enter his contact details
3. An Autoresponder which will enable you to send out mails to these visitors on a regular basis
4. Ongoing effort to bring visitors to your squeeze page (called Traffic)

1. Squeeze Page:

• A Squeeze page is a web-page that has the sole purpose of capturing the name and email id of a new visitor (called Lead) by offering something of value for free. Since it is a web-page, you would require a domain name and web hosting to host the domain. There are numerous companies offering domain names and hosting. I have given a few names in the bibliography section in the end.
• The goal of the squeeze page is to get the visitor into your email autoresponder so that you can continue to educate the visitor (subscriber) on the benefits of what you have to offer. Over time you will develop visitor value and trust, and eventually sales.

2. Free Report:

• You should be able to offer something of very high value for free to the visitor. This will entice the visitor to enter his contact information. Ideally it should be a digital product (Report, Audio, Video, e-course etc) so that the product can be downloaded automatically without any human intervention. Many Coaches offer some kind of assessments (find your values, find your strengths etc). Some examples are:

a. Three Keys to change at work and in life
b. 101 ways to reduce stress in your life
c. How to create more health, wealth and happiness by tapping into the power of daily action

3. Opt-in Form or Email Capture Form:

• This is the form in the squeeze page that captures the visitor’s information. This is usually provided by the Autoresponder service provider. The autoresponder sends a message to the new visitor automatically as soon as he enters his information and presses enter.

4. Autoresponder:

• This is a service thru which the Coach can send emails to all the visitors who have entered their contact details. This is a powerful way to communicate with your visitors regularly.

So the Sales Process is:

1. Traffic is driven to your squeeze page from Facebook, Google Advertising, Blogging, Article Marketing or any other promotional tool employed by you (more about this later).

2. Visitors land up on your squeeze page and are presented a page featuring:

a. Simple and distraction free page, clear design
b. The headline clearly offering what is being offered
c. A clear Call To Action prompting the visitor to take action (for eg Get Your Free Download).
d. A privacy statement (optional) stating that the visitor’s email id is safe with you, that you will not sell or rent these contact details with a third party.

3. The visitor then hits the submit button after entering the required data (usually Name and email id )
4. The visitor is then directed to the free product you had offered and her name/email id is added to your mailing database.

5. The visitor receives an automatic Thank You mail (thru your Autoresponder). From now on, he is on your List and you can contact him anytime you want.