The Funnel is Broken
Every other day it seems like there's another company going through a round of layoffs. Especially tech companies. And it's even reached the local market in Calgary (where I live).
Great companies. Doing great things. Laying off people because the revenue isn't there to sustain their hiring.
Granted, some of these companies expanded too fast without a solid foundation. Something that happens a lot with "hot tech".
But MOST of them have a problem that's easier to address.
No funnel.
Or minimally, a broken funnel.
In simple terms, your funnel is the way you move people through the process of finding out you exist to buying what you're selling.
It's a process with multiple points.
Which means, there are lots of places the process can break.
For the sake of this article, we're going to look at some common broken areas of the marketing and sales process that lead directly to the need for layoffs. So, if you're hoping your business will escape the trend, then you might want to consider an audit of your processes on these grounds.
Step One: People Know You Exist
This is where we're talking about things like "visibility". But it doesn't matter if ALL people know you exist. What DOES matter is that the people who have the problem your product or service solves know that you exist.
This is a place where many advertising strategies break.
When we advertise, we send out a one-way message to a lot of people. And because advertising is about REACH, we make the message more generic, to "resonate" with more people.
Here's the problem.
People don't resonate with a generic message.
The thing they resonate with the MOST is something they ALREADY believe.
And I'll tell you one thing, they don't already believe they need your product.
But they might believe they need to know more. Or they might believe that someone in their network might know more. Or, they might believe that "Togetherness can be based on Uniqueness" (that's a belief I share on my LinkedIn profile).
When beliefs align, people align. And you get the chance to do business with someone. But if you don't show up with beliefs, you're not giving people anything to align with.
Best case scenario, you're a transaction. And I don't believe in relationships that are solely transaction based.
So this step isn't just about being PRESENT. It's about BEING who you are as a brand, so people can connect with you. That's when they truly know YOU exist, and not just that a company exists 💡
Step Two: People Talk To You
Again, if we look just at advertising, it's not about a 2-way conversation. It's about me telling you a thing and you hopefully (🤞) listening to it.
A relationship of any kind, including a business relationship, doesn't happen with only one way communication. At least not in a relationship that includes any kind of significant investment. Advertising might work for selling a bag of chips, but that's just not how people buy a car, or how people buy business services.
So, you need to get people into a CONVERSATION with you.
And this is a place where MOST marketing efforts fail. Sales can sometimes pick up the slack if they know they need to, but often we leave potential conversations hanging.
And there's another important break-point in this step.
Once you pick up that low-hanging fruit, if you just continue talking AT them, you're still not building a relationship.
People will only talk to you if you LISTEN. And they can tell from a mile away if you have no intention of listening, only selling.
I get at least one message on LinkedIn a DAY selling me something "I need" from people who have never met me. And do I believe them? Heck no. The messages get deleted and they leave my mind instantly. Is that the experience we're paying our salespeople to create? No wonder people don't want to interact with salespeople any more 🙄
If you're not LISTENING and LEARNING in your marketing and sales processes, then you're never going to be building the solid relationships that fill a funnel.
Step Three: People Trust You
This is really a combination of Steps One and Two, and the reason I call it out here is that, if either of the first two steps are missing, trust CAN'T develop.
Only in a trusting relationship will people reveal their TRUE problems to you 😉
Step Four: Offer to Solve Their Problem
This is the break-point for most entrepreneurs. We believe we can help someone, but if we aren't sure, we won't offer to help.
But that's similar to this...
I'm running through the desert and I'm so thirsty. All of a sudden, I come across another traveler with 20 bottles of water. We start talking about water. I tell them how thirsty I am. And they just lead their camel in the opposite direction.
You have something I need. I told you that I need it. And now you're keeping it to yourself.
Relationship broken.
Most people assume that offering a sale is the thing that's going to break the relationship. But what's much more likely to break a relationship is you NOT offering your help when someone has asked for it.
But you need to LISTEN to hear that 👂
Step Five: Make it easy to say "Yes"
If you've done your due diligence in the first 4 steps, it should feel easy for the RIGHT people to say YES to you.
Reminder: the process is meant to filter out the WRONG people.
But if it's too difficult to transition from a YES to a closed deal, we have another part of the funnel that may be broken.
Take a look at how many steps exist from a verbal yes to a signed contract. The more there are, the more likely you will be to lose people along the way.
Now, certainly there will always be extenuating circumstances that cause deals to falter. But if you have a strong relationship upon which the YES is based, there's a "problem solving" phenomenon that happens. We work together to figure out how to make it work for both parties. We don't switch from a YES to a NO; we maintain our YES and find a way to make it happen.
More Broken Pieces ≠ A Fix
So here's the secret. If you're not happy with your funnel, one or more of these stages are broken. And adding MORE of the activities you're doing in each of those stages doesn't fix the problem. It amplifies the brokenness.
I loved this picture of all the broken plates because to me it easily explains this principle. One broken plate or 100 broken plates doesn't give me any more plates to actually eat my lunch on.
In marketing and sales though, we do this ALL THE TIME.
We're not getting enough engagement on our content so we'd better create MORE content.
We're not getting enough sales so we need to hire more salespeople.
We're not closing any deals from attending tradeshows so we should attend more tradeshows.
[insert face palm here]
Come on team. I know you're smarter than that.
It's 2023. And it's time to stop blaming our lack of funnel on something that is OUTSIDE of us. You, and your team if you have one, have all the ingredients to make your funnel work in the current environment. You just need to do the activities that get you the results, and for heavens sakes STOP doing the activities that don't.
Today's the day to start doing things differently.
Today's the day to start making this work.
