Fix your sales funnels instead of starting all over again with a sales funnel audit
In the early days of my business, I abandoned plenty of great funnels. When I look back now, I find myself mourning that wasted potential.
Like many entrepreneurs, I had a ton of ideas that I was excited about – new products, new programs, new freebies.
There's a reason they say boredom kills a lot of really great businesses. Our commitment to new ideas outweighs our commitment to our existing ones.
What I've learned about running a profitable online business
Here is the secret: it's a lot simpler than we make it.
We think it's all about having the latest and greatest idea when it's more about picking a great idea and sticking with it.
If you truly want to scale your business, I would encourage you to pick one main offer and build a sales system, aka a sales funnel, around it. Dedicate your time to tweaking and optimizing that sales funnel until it works.
Only once you've reached that point, should you allow yourself to move on to the next idea while that existing sale system goes into maintenance mode.
Why everyone with the sales funnel needs THIS calculator
I recently updated my sales funnel audit calculator, and I couldn't wait to share it with my community. I know that you're an entrepreneur who is full of good ideas and a ton of heart. I want to help you get these ideas to more people.
The big reasons why I love this calculator are:
1. It helps you decide what to focus on next
When it comes to fixing our funnels, it can be overwhelming to face that overflowing to-do list. When you think of the areas of your funnel that you could fix, and when you combine the to-do list that you already have from your day to day business, it is no wonder so many of us have action paralysis. When we get overwhelmed, we end up working on all of the wrong things.
2. It does the sales funnel analysis for you.
Another big reason why people struggle with sales funnel audits themselves is that they don't know what the numbers mean. There are a lot of little figures that have big consequences when it comes to the overall performance of your sales funnel.
The great thing about this calculator is that you put in your numbers and it does the analysis for you. It tells you exactly what these numbers represent.
3. It runs projections for how much you can afford to pay for each lead and what happens if you change some of these key performance indicators of your sales funnel.
Imagine you were at an audio booth with a ton of levers in front of you. As a business owner, you have the power to turn up different levers and get different reactions and results. That is precisely the way your sales funnel works. You can choose what you focus on and amplify, and that can have big implications for how your sales funnel performs.
The great thing about this calculator is that it breaks down exactly how much you can afford to pay per lead depending on your other costs. This sales funnel can also show you the potential of what can happen if you optimize different elements of your funnel.
If you want to get the calculator for yourself, make sure to click on the image below and download a copy for yourself.
A couple of ground rules
There are a couple of things that are needed for this sales funnel calculator to work.
Number one: you have to have had at least one sale through your sales funnel.
If you put in zero, it's going to mess with the calculations. If you're starting with a brand new funnel with no sales yet, focus on getting 100 people through and making your first sale through the funnel first.
Number two: choose a timeframe.
If you have a ton of sales, you might be able to use this calculator every month to run the optimization report on it. On the other hand, if you have fewer sales and you want to start improving things overall, you can also measure the lifetime of your sales funnel.
It's up to you how frequently you want to use this calculator. Always stick to a regular schedule for follow up audits to see if those numbers are moving in the right direction.
Wondering what numbers the calculator analyzes for you?
Numbers to Know: The Freebie System
The first phase of creating a sales funnel is to create your freebie system.
The freebie is what is going to attract high-quality leads and validate them. You want to make sure it has an extremely close connection to your paid offer.
Your freebie system includes:
- The freebie itself – whether it is a quiz, a PDF, a webinar, or anything else
- Your opt-in page – where people sign up for it. This can be anywhere. Maybe you have a form on your homepage, the bottom of your blog posts, your thank you page, or even your welcome emails.
The key numbers to know in your freebie system for your sales funnel audit are:
- The number of unique visitors to your OPT in page
- The number of signups for your freebie
- The conversion rate based on these two previous numbers
Numbers to Know: The Offer System
The offer system is the part of your funnel that takes your validated leads and gets them to the offer. This system is all about priming your customers and educating them about what your offer is so that by the time you send that first sales email, they're already thinking “YES!”
The offer system includes:
- The sales page for the offer
- The sales emails being sent as part of the sales funnel
The key numbers to know for measuring your offers system would be:
- Your number of purchases
- The dollar amount value of those sales
- The number of opens and clicks of each email
- Your unique sales page visits
- If you're running a consultation call funnel, you would also look at the number of consult calls that you're booking plus your close rate.
Numbers to Know: The Traffic System
The final phase of your sales funnel is the traffic system. I always like to tell entrepreneurs who're using content marketing to grow their business to make sure they have a reliable sales funnel system in place.
We want to make sure that any traffic that you're driving to your website has a purpose. That purpose, if you're in business, is to make sales.
Your traffic system includes:
- Anything you use to drive traffic to your opt-in page or any page that has the call to action for your freebie, aka, the entryway to your funnel.
The key numbers to know for your traffic system are:
- Where your traffic is coming from to your opt-in page
Using the results to improve your sales funnel
Knowing the numbers is only going to do you so much good. It's still vital information to identify, but it's better to use these numbers to make informed changes to improve your sales funnel.
After you look at the numbers, the first decision should be to identify whether it's a traffic problem, a leads problem, or a conversion problem.
If you identify that as a traffic problem…
Most sales funnels have a traffic problem. You want to make sure you're optimizing your traffic sources. This could mean altering specific social media platforms, layering in paid ads, or doing more podcast interviews. Whatever you need to do to drive more people to your freebie.
If you determine that it's a lead problem…
Your main area for improvement is going to be the opt-in page. What can you do to increase the conversion rate of that specific page?
If you determine that it's a conversion problem…
This means you have two main areas of improvement for your sales funnel:
1) You're going to want to look at your sales page. What can you do to improve it?
2) You're going to want to look closely at every email that you send out. What can you do to increase the number of opens or increase the number of click-throughs?
Are you ready to start improving your sales funnel? Start your sales funnel audit!
If you're tempted to give up on your sales funnel and move onto another idea, I want you to stop and download the sales funnel audit to calculate where the issue is. You've already done a lot of work in setting it up, Let's find a way to salvage all of that hard work!
Download the calculator and set aside some time to use it.
