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)

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.