How does a sales team convert cold prospects into potential leads? How can one influence customers to choose their products/brand/company? In today's blog, we will answer these questions, further understanding the sales funnel concept.

Sales funnel usually is helpful for companies in identifying new potential customers and prospects who could reap benefits in the long run. A sales funnel is important as it highlights the journey of a potential prospect to a loyal customer. There are various stages of a sales funnel and one must understand the need and importance of each stage to completely optimize the funnel and gain benefits from it. let's look into the various stages of the sales funnel below.

STAGES OF THE SALES FUNNEL:

1. Awareness: It is basically the most preliminary stage where the company is expected to market and advertise its products to create brand awareness to attract new and potential customers. How a customer moves below this stage is solely dependent on the amount and quality of marketing. A very good way of creating awareness can be through search engine optimization. The number of clicks per advertisement can be a good measure of keeping a count on the rate of new customers attracted.
2. Interest: This is the stage where the customer shows interest in the particular brand of the company. This stage is often critical and the deciding factor where the consumer usually decides if on the basis of their interest the company meets with their requirements or expectations or not. 
3. Decision: In this stage, the consumer has all the required information but to make an informed decision further the potential customer would invade deeper into the schemes and pricing options. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a good way for staying ahead of competitors and being a step ahead in the competitive world.
4. Action: Every work, effort, and time put in the above three stages boils down to this final and last deciding stage. This is the stage where the consumer makes a purchase or decision to continue with your company. If not there are still chances that the consumer might recommend to someone else whose requirements match with that of the companies.

Sales Funnel Analysis:

The sales funnel is a basic picturization of how leads are converted to prospects and finally to customers. A timely and accurate analysis of a sales funnel is difficult to maintain. For this purpose, certain tools and metrics should be used which can help in easy understanding of the funnel. CRM, analytics, and performance management techniques are some of the most commonly used techniques for gaining a better understanding of the sales funnel.