Business comes down to one basic truth: people need to buy whatever it is that you’re selling. To make that happen, sales teams guide buyers through the sales funnel, a process designed to turn prospects into satisfied customers.

But what happens when your funnel is flawed? Leads slip through the cracks, revenue stalls, and your customer base shrinks. Poor funnel development doesn’t just cost you money; it sabotages growth.

That’s why today we’ll uncover the hidden dangers of a broken funnel and provide actionable steps to fix it, so you can turn leads into conversions and maximize your business potential.

What Is A Sales Funnel?

Let’s start at the beginning, what is a sales funnel?

According to HubSpot, a sales funnel “mirrors the path your prospects take to become a customer. It describes discrete stages of the customer journey, from first touch to closed deal”.

Many companies are switching to a flywheel method as opposed to the traditional funnel visual, which you can read more about here, but for the purpose of this article, the standard funnel works just fine.

What’s Good Vs. Bad Funnel Development?

If you have robust funnel development, you have high-quality leads passing consistently through each stage of the funnel, going from awareness to interest, to desire, to action. This means you will always have new customers coming into the business, either to replace those lost to churn or to continue growing the company.

On the other hand, bad funnel development typically comes down to one of three things.

1. You aren’t getting enough leads into the top of the funnel. As prospects move through the funnel, some are naturally weeded out as they find the solution isn’t the right fit for them, they don’t have the budget, etc. That means that by the time you’re going to close if you don’t have the right volume coming in the top of the funnel, you may not have many leads to seal the deal with.
2. Your leads aren’t qualified. Even if you’re getting a bunch of people into the funnel, if they’re not the right people who need your product/service, they quickly exit, burning up valuable time and resources for your employees.
3. You have a hole in your funnel. If your leads aren’t being nurtured and pushed through each step of the funnel, you’ll lose them. For example, let's say prospects are passing through the awareness and interest stages, but there is a steep drop-off for those who make it through the desire stage. There may be a failure in processes at that stage that is losing you prospects. This is a very common problem, in fact, 79% of leads never convert to a sale (Leadsbridge).

How Does Poor Funnel Development Cost You Revenue?

If your funnel isn’t well developed it can cost you in several ways. First, not having a developed sales funnel creates major inconsistencies in revenue. If you’re not constantly having new prospects come in, if you’re selling a physical product you no longer have new customers to sell to resulting in an immediate decrease in revenue. If you’re in the B2B world your revenue decrease may be further down the road, but it will still come. Alternatively, if you’re entering into long-term contracts with other businesses, suddenly you’re at the mercy of your existing clients and if one walks out the door, you’re in major trouble.

This fluctuation makes it incredibly hard to effectively run the business. Suddenly questions about resources, which to priritize, which to omit, and other related topics take center stage over how to continue to grow the company. It also makes it difficult to plan for the future, because if you don’t have consistent sources of new revenue coming in (i.e. a consistent flow of new customers through the lead funnel) you’re at the whim of the market. How can you plan to expand, or even plan what the company may look like, if you don’t know what your revenue will look like a few months down the road.

Additionally, a poorly developed sales funnel results in an inefficient use of your existing resources. If your sales reps are spending their time following up on unqualified leads instead of guiding those who may actually buy, you’re losing revenue. This has gotten to the point where poorly managed leads and lost productivity cost companies at least a trillion, yes trillion with a T, dollars, every year! (Close CRM) That is an insane amount of revenue, gone.

The same is true if you have a leaky sales funnel where prospects are pouring out through a hole at a certain stage. You may be losing qualified leads who could have been major sales, all because one part of the process isn’t working as it should.

How We Solve It.

At Salelytics we take a bird's eye view when it comes to funnel development. It’s about more than just generating leads; it’s about more than even generating qualified leads. It’s about connecting with the decision-maker at the right time, in the right channel, and with a message that matters.

So how do we do it? First, inside sales associates are responsible for initiating contact and qualifying customers based on specific criteria that are outlined by our experience and the client's sales cycle. This process begins with sparking customer interest using a variety of tactics and sales channels including phone, email, video conferencing, and fax. In the majority of cases, after uncovering interest, the inside sales associate qualifies the customer and schedules a follow-up meeting.

If you’ve read the article odds are your sales funnel needs some help. You might not have a robust inside sales team in place, or maybe your team is so busy they can’t focus time on generating new business. At Salelytics we have over three decades of inside sales experience and can help you get your sales funnel developed, increasing your bottom line. Click here to schedule a call to learn more about how our team can help you!