Having a defined sales funnel can be a helpful way to organize and understand your sales process, which can then translate into more customers. But before we discuss defining YOUR sales funnel, let’s start by talking about the broader concept of a sales funnel.
The top of a funnel is broad and wide. It accommodates the largest quantity of whatever it is that’s going through the narrowing process. In the case of insurance sales, the top of the funnel is the largest pool of potential customers that you have available to you. Let’s say that includes everyone you know personally, all of those people’s contacts, leads that you generate from other sources (like your website) and leads that you get through Hometown Quotes.
As your insurance sales funnel narrows, you’re going to see many of those potential customers evaporate. Some friends and family won’t be interested in buying insurance and/or giving you referrals, while leads from other sources will fall off as you qualify them.
It’s important to note here that the leads you get from Hometown Quotes are different—high-intent customers who have been qualified before you receive them and who are actively shopping for insurance. As long as you respond to them quickly (since they’re either still online or were within minutes of the time you get the lead), more of them will continue down the funnel path than the general population.
Back to the funnel visual. Your initial pool has now been reduced to qualified potential customers. You might picture this as the narrowest part of the funnel, where you take them through the sales process with the goal of moving them into your database of paying customers.
There you have it—that’s a basic sketch of a generic sales funnel.
So now it’s time to think about what YOUR sales funnel should look like. There’s a lot of room for customization. Some might find it helpful to think about it in terms of customer labels like:
-General Lead
-Qualified Lead
-Prospect
-Engaged Prospect
-Customer
Another way to label your funnel top-to-bottom could be by action items:
-Identify Lead
-Qualify
-Make Contact
-Sell
-Sign Up
-Cross-Sell
If you look online, you can see lots of great options for how to label a sales funnel. You may find it helpful to actually draw a few funnels on a piece of paper and trying labeling them different ways. When you find a set of labels that make sense to you, go ahead and tape your final product on the wall or put it somewhere else you can see it regularly.
Once you’ve done that, now you can move to the really important part: measurement. Having an identified sales funnel is most effective if you have metrics assigned to each segment that you measure and evaluate regularly. This will tell you where your sales process needs to be beefed up.
Do you lots of general leads but not have enough qualified leads? Maybe you need to bump up the number of leads you receive from Hometown Quotes every week. Are you having trouble getting in touch with your leads? It might be time to rethink your work hours so that you are reaching out when more of your potential customers are available.
Track your progress every month to see how you’re doing. You’ll soon be able to identify clogs and holes that you can fix. This is the real utility of a sales funnel and how it will help increase your insurance sales.
Need more ideas? Your Hometown Quotes Regional Director is a great resource to help you conceptualize an effective sales funnel. Give us a call at 800.820.2981 and we’ll share that and more to help you have a lucrative year.
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