The modern digital sales funnel can be stripped down to building blocks that are outside of tech. Really! The way companies sell today vs how it was done in the past is vastly different. For starters, there was a lot less information available and ways to interact beyond the phone and in-person. This meant a lot more cold calling and warming up leads, and not much information flowing between different verticals of the business.
Tech aside, with more information and ways to interact available, people might feel like they already know each other before they actually meet. This cultural change has shifted the sales and retention process to relationship-focused. Some clients will be more like cacti and need little attention to blossom where others need constant watering and tending to. It’s all about establishing trust and understanding.
What ensures that the digital sales funnel gets refilled?
It’s all about relationships. The digital sales funnel relies on strong relationships for long-term viability. It starts with aligning the entire organization’s internal teams’ communications and allowing Tricycle to steer the ship. With these parameters in place, everyone knows what’s working and not. This data can also present the historical best way to build relationships, what the indicators are for client success at different points in time, and buying signals. Bonus! Delighted clients are happy to give referrals.
There are relationships between the company and client, sales leaders and sales team, consultants and executives, leadership and executives, and so on. Ideally, these people are interconnected. Maintaining internal alignment can help the iterative testing process move more quickly. The organization is no longer chopped into buckets. Before the first human interaction with the lead happens, they have been vetted and the lead themself has likely done their research on the company.
Your digital sales funnel will also point out where your leads are on the buyer’s journey based on all their interactions and expressed intent. These interactions happen on social media, over email, on the phone, and in-person. Everything should be tracked in your company’s CRM. Building relationships first paves the way for a better overall customer experience, builds trust, and leads to advocacy. Aside from an emotional perspective, relationship-focused sales are more likely to stay, cost less money to bring in, and are willing to grow with you.
What Streamlines the Digital Sales Funnel Process?
The digital selling process is future-proof. With everyone in the organization aligned, it’s suddenly a lot easier to collectively understand the big picture and work effectively. Aligning everyone around ideas can also apply to content sharing and thought leadership on social media, ensuring that all activities are aimed at achieving specific goals.
The information that was once held in buckets is now flowing between departments. Marketers have feedback of what’s picking up the most engagement, the sales team knows what of those messages is working in-person, and operations can take both of those datasets and better iterate on how to grow the company’s offerings. Stitching the data together ensures that any adjustments are more calculated and logical. From a zoomed-in perspective, these data sets can also point to which leads have the strongest intent.
With the internal departments all aligned, you can collaborate with your thought leadership on content that’s pushed out to inbound and social channels. The entire team should be in agreement about what to post, when to post it, and whom it’s for. How does this tie back to trust? People outside of the organization will recognize the consistency, further cementing your brand and people as the thought leaders.
What else helps future-proof these modern methods? The proof is in the layers of support and connection. Tricycle’s team is there to ensure that the process of internal alignment happens seamlessly. Understandably, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees when you’re on the inside. Tricycle’s Sales Enablement coaching helps manage the bigger picture as well as maximizing every sales tactic and tool.
Digital Sales Funnel Stages in Modern Selling
Companies can invest in the best sales tools, but without proper utilization, they’re losing out. Part of Tricycle’s alignment process is helping customer-facing professionals select and implete tools that work seamlessly with daily routines. Sellers also need to benefit from the tools such that it cuts down the amount of daily admin work. More admin work means less time spent on selling. For example, when the CRM can track and quickly present the layers of communication that already happened, salespeople can decisively choose the best course of action for the next call.
Without CRM integration, the sales process can be set back to a time before relationships were key. The CRM presents client information succinctly from how they interact with you to when to what their likelihood is to convert. Without building relationships with clients first, we would have longer sales cycles, chase the wrong leads, incur higher costs, and not maximize the sales tools.
Tricycle’s team doesn’t ever take a one-sized approach. We combine to-the-minute best practices with our own strategies to ensure all of our people and clients succeed. The future of selling will be won by companies that maximize their digital tools and social channels. If you’re ready to learn more about how we help companies win in the digital space, reach out to us. We can’t wait to meet you.
Social Selling plays a fundamental role in the new way of doing business and communicating with the client. Would you like to discover more about how to scale and implement a social selling strategy for your team accordingly? Sign up for our next Social Selling for Managers with Sarah Loessner – Digital Business Consultant at Tricycle Europe, on July 8 at 16:30 CET.
