How many of you need more customers but have no clue how to find them?  I find that this is the number one problem facing solo business owners.

As a solo business owner, I bet that you are great at what you “do.”  You might be a great coach, a great painter, a great copywriter, a great freelance writer, or a great real estate agent. But, if they can’t find new customers, you will never have a chance to show off how great you are at what you do.  But, today we are going to develop a sales funnel to help you attract customers and then convert them into paying customers.

What is a sales funnel?

As you can see above the sales funnel is symbolized by a funnel or an upside down triangle.  It is really wide at the top because this is the part of the funnel where you want all possible customers to know about you and your business.  Then, the bottom of the funnel is the small spout where only paying customers come out.  The goal of the sales funnel is to get all customers into your funnel and for you to keep them their until they become repeat customers.

My sales funnel has five parts.  Yours might have more or less, but I have found these five parts to be sufficient.

  • Marketing
  • Provide Value and Build Trust
  • Capture Leads
  • Nurture Relationship
  • Sales

Marketing

The top of your sales funnel consists of your marketing efforts.  You need to develop a marketing plan that gets more and more prospective customers to know about you and your business.

I focus my marketing efforts on social media marketing and forum participation.  You can find me at the following social media sites:

My goal for each of these sites is three-fold.  I want to (i) network with people interested in the same things I am interested in, (ii) meet potential customers, and (iii) provide value to both of these groups of people.  This means that social media is an important part of five phases of my sales funnel.

Provide Value and Build Trust – Great Content, Products and Help

Once you have the attention of prospective customers, you need to provide value and build trust.  Most prospective customers don’t just see a link on Twitter and buy a product, especially an expensive product.  Therefore, once you have their attention your sales funnel needs to be designed to provide value and build trust.

The heart and soul of this part of my sales funnel is my blog.  Sure I try to provide value in the links I tweet on Twitter and the stories I share on Facebook, but the hub of my sales funnel is my blog.  And, since SoloBizCoach.com is my hub, my primary goal is to write great content that helps people and builds trust.

But, my blog articles are not the only means for me to provide value and build trust.  While my primary goal is to conduct one-on-one coaching with aspiring entrepreneurs, I have several products on the roadmap that, in addition to making sales, I want these products to provide excellent value so my customers trust me more and more.  This is a critical part of a sales funnel, and one that too many people fail to develop.

Capture Leads

The next part of your sales funnel needs to be your lead capture area.  Capturing leads is crucial element of the sales funnel because it allows you directly contact your prospective customers.

For anyone who has a website, you need to be capturing potential customers’ email addresses.  Tons of people will visit your site, and you typically have no way of ever contacting them again.  They might read a few articles, be generally impressed, but with today’s information overload, once they leave your site, too many will never visit again.  But, with an email capture system you can reconnect with these people and remind them to revisit your site.

My Solo Biz Tribe newsletter serves as my lead capture system.  Once someone signs up for my newsletter, I can provide them with even more valuable information, and hopefully build more and more trust.  By the way, if you haven’t signed up my my Solo Biz Tribe newsletter, I would love for you to sign up now. Use the link in the first sentence.

Nurture Relationships

I have talked about this part of the sales funnel throughout this article.  The whole point of social networking, blogging, and email lists is nurture marketing.  For most solo businesses it takes time to build trust and convince customers to buy your products and services.  Or, potential customers might not be ready to buy yet.  Therefore, through nurture marketing, you can maintain a relationship with your customers and make sure that you are on the top of their mind when they are ready to buy.

Sales and Repeat Customers

The spout of the sales funnel is where you make sales and repeat sales.  Once you have attracted people into your sales funnel, built a relationship with them, and offered valuable products, you will convert them into customers, and, hopefully, repeat customers.

I hope that this article helps you to build your own sales funnel.  You need to visualize how you intend to get people into your sales funnel and how you will convert them into paying customers.  Once you do this, you will be well on your way to getting more customers.