Making money in your sleep and selling on autopilot… this is every entrepreneur’s dream and it sounds perfect and ideal for an online service-based business, right?
This is why a lot of people jump into trying to create automated sales processes too quickly and spend a lot of time creating sales funnels that never actually convert effectively.
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What are the most important things you need to know in order to effectively build sales funnels that work for your business so that you can start selling on autopilot?
Read on or watch below to find out!
To better understand, let’s separate these two concepts:
1. Sales funnels
Anything that takes someone from being curious about your work or finding you somewhere through a process that warms them up to the concept of working with you, and then invites them to make a purchase.
2. Selling on autopilot
Where you then set that sales funnel up so that it works completely independently of your time and your energy. It’s pouring people in the top and spitting out sales at the bottom without you actually having to be involved in that process in any 1:1 capacity with the people who are going through that sales funnel.
The reason why I separate these two things is that from the very beginning of our businesses, we are building the components of sales funnels – whether we are conscious of it or not.
But are you building your sales funnels strategically and consciously?
If you are just building sales funnels by accident or haphazardly, then a little bit of time and consideration can go a long way in improving the results of your business with just a few minor tweaks and changes.
Let’s say you are only selling 1:1. You can have people read your blog post, listen to a podcast, grab a freebie and jump into your mailing list. Then from there, they receive an email. It’s an email sequence inviting them to connect and have a conversation with you about whether working with you as a 1:1 client will be the right fit for them right now.
A sales funnel is inviting people to connect with you and could potentially result in them being a paying client of yours.
Ultimately, whether it converts or not, will require a conversation with someone.
The next thing is that you need to have proof of concept that people are willing to pay for your services.
You need to know that you have a saleable product or service because there’s no point in building that sales funnel if you don’t even know that people will be paying for your services at the end of it.
Communication of marketing funnel for funnels and automations
You also need to have real clarity about your niche and messaging so you can be able to communicate what you know and what your ideal clients are looking for.
As long as you have clarity on your niche, your message and your value proposition, you’re really able to build sales funnels as you go from those early stages of your business.
Let’s say you’re selling online courses. Normally you sell through a launch process (ie. a webinar where you have a certain percentage of people who come along to that webinar, purchase your course, and you run a live round of your course). And that’s really how you’re making sales of your online program at this stage.
That’s still a sales funnel, it’s just a very active sales funnel.
All you need to know now is that you’ve got a launch that works because you are getting a high conversion.
If that happens, you can take that information and turn it into an automated sales funnel. It’s just a matter of considering:
- What is the right medium for the freebie or the lead magnet?
- What are the email sequences that you will need to then send people through in order to answer their questions, deal with some of those buyers’ psychology with things like social proof, understanding what the outcome is going to be so that you can actually talk them through that process in your email sequence, and then having a really great sales page that they can then click over to if they’re interested in it?
It’s simply turning an active sales funnel into a passive one.
When creating passive sales funnels, consider these things:
1. You don’t need to be spammy.
You don’t need to send 17 emails in 5 days, as this is likely to result in a high unsubscribe rate.
2. The numbers.
Look at the numbers and test your funnel with organic reach first.
I usually recommend to build the funnel and then go out and get 100 people to go through it through your organic reach, posting on social media, on your Facebook page, in Facebook groups, send an email to your existing followers on your mailing list and let them know about this freebie that you’ve got.
Set yourself a challenge of getting 100 people to go through that funnel. That will give you some really juicy information about how easily people are actually signing up and how attractive it is to them.
Hopefully, this podcast episode gives you some ideas, insights and inspiration on how you can build your sales funnel and how you can start moving towards selling on autopilot.
Make sure to come and post in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs community and share your comments and questions using #podcastaha and the episode number (177).
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
