Before you can maximize your sales funnel, you need to have all of the teams on board including your sales and marketing teams. So let’s look at three ways to build a stronger sales funnel.

1 Target Only Relevant Traffic

One of the biggest lessons you need to learn is that they need to stop targeting those internet surfers that will never become your customer. It just doesn’t make sense to waste your resources and your energy if it is unlikely they will ever become paying customers.

2 Distinguish the Importance of Issues

Most of us are aware that we need to be able to recognize problems and uncover them, but most don’t distinguish between the importance of these issues, and how to raise important issues, or interesting issues. Why? Because when your prospect has needs that are interesting it will get you consideration and when your prospect has needs that are important it will get you evaluated, but only when your prospect has needs that are urgent will you get sales.

Sales peoples spend a great deal of time going after opportunities that are not urgent and without the urgency, there will never be a sale. Another common mistake by sales people is chasing after prospects where another vendor has a much better solution than you do. Not all opportunities are worth chasing after.

Of course, you should still market to important and interesting needs to get a conversation going but your sales team should be trained so that they can identify if there is an urgency because without the urgency your prospect won’t turn into a sale.

3 Redefine the Sales Funnel Based on Buying Process

If you already have a sales funnel, how have you designed it? Do you have important milestones that an opportunity must pass through in order to move to the next level? If your milestones are based on sales activity, it’s time for a change. This method is very inaccurate. Instead, create your sales funnel based on the buying process, and the decisions made during the buying process.

Build your milestones based on the evidence of buying decisions. This is certainly a little harder than using activity associated with sales but much more accurate when you are projecting when an opportunity is likely to happen. It is likely to do a much better job of fine tuning your sales funnel and making it more effective.