Hey, creative. You ever heard of the sales funnel or have you ever heard of the sales funnel? Have no idea what it is, why it matters, what the deal is. People talk all the time about the funnel Sales funnel, click Funnels funnel, funnel Funnel in sales. Okay, well, in this episode, I want to explain to you what that is and it actually is important. And I think it can help you a lot when it comes to sales, because I know sales, especially for creative people, is a real challenge, real hard. It makes you nervous and it makes you feel gross. And and I understand why that is. I think so. I think I’m gonna, when if I explain to you the sales funnel, how to use it, how it works, it’s gonna help you, I think it’ll help you relax a little bit. It’ll help you be more confident and it’s, and, and most importantly, help you make more meaningful and positive sales.
The sales funnel is simply a process. It’s a, it’s a way human beings think through actions they want to take. And let me explain it like this. Let me give you an example of how the sales funnel works in the real world. Cause when I say sales, I mean any decision humans make, whether it’s buying a car, going on a vacation, or choosing a partner, a spouse. Yeah. Or choosing a belief system. A political party. Yeah. This is just how, this is how it works. Let me show you an example. Let’s say that you are in a bar or at a cocktail party or an, uh, some sort of social event. And you meet another person, man or woman or otherwise, and you’re talking and things are going great and you’re having drinks and things are just warming up. And man, and you’ve been talking for maybe 30 minutes and, and it seems like you, you two really like each other. This is this, this might have something. And as, as you’re talking, then the other person says to you, after about 30 minutes, the other person says to you, Hey, you want to get married this Saturday?
What would you do? You would call security, right? You would walk away, this is creepy. All of a sudden, this is weird. Like, whoa. Hey, hey <laugh>. And what would you say to them? You would say, I don’t even know you. Exactly. I don’t even know you. I don’t know enough about you to be comfortable taking an action. Now let’s, same scenario. Let’s do this again. You’re talking to someone at a cocktail party or an event. Things are going great, but here’s the backstory. You two have been dating for two years. You’re deeply in love and you’ve spent every minute of the last two years together. You just are perfect for each other and you can’t get enough of each other. And you’re at this cocktail party and the two of you were talking in a corner and your partner
Says to you, you wanna get married this Saturday. Now, isn’t that a different story now it’s a romantic adventure we’re gonna tell our grandkids about. And of course you say, yeah, let’s go do it. It’s an adventure. This is great. Okay? Same scenario, exactly the two same people, but they were at different points in each other’s lives. The it was they were in, it is a different kind of relationship. That’s what the sales funnel is. It defines four steps of a any human relationship. And those four steps, you’ll see lots of versions out there. And some of ’em have six and some have five. But the one I like and the one that works for me, four steps. They are awareness, interest, desire, action, awareness, interest, desire, action, A i d A. Those are the four steps every human being goes through before they make a decision to act.
Whether with money or with love or with belief system. Here’s the problem. You’ve been taught the elevator speech. You’ve been taught these, you’ve been taught the, the activities at the bottom action. How Try to get people, Hey, you just, it’s like girl scout cookies, right? You, hey, uh, you know, you don’t know me, you never heard of me. You wanna buy something from me? No, of course not. Of course I do not wanna do that. So you have to start with awareness. This is the rule of the funnel is you can’t skip steps. You’re not allowed to skip steps. Awareness, interest, desire, action. So you have to do different activities and different communications at each level to help people move the right people move through the funnel. And at any point in the funnel, people are allowed to leave. They’re allowed to walk away and go, you know what?
This isn’t for me not interested. The problem is some people teach you to try and keep them in that funnel. Force them down that funnel. No, that’s wrong. That’s gross. That’s why you feel sleazy. And that’s why if you’ve ever bought from someone who’s pushing you, that’s what you said, right? I feel pushed. They’re literally pushing you down the funnel and you don’t want to go. But for even people who do want to go, you have to click off those four steps. Awareness, interest, desire, action. Here’s the thing though. It takes time. And we don’t hear that enough. We don’t tell each other that enough, that sales takes time. I did an episode on sales called, uh, uh, marketing is farming and that’s true. Uh, and it ha but it’s the same idea. It takes time From the moment that I’ve just, first time I’ve ever heard of you to when I buy from, you can take a long time. Sometimes it can take months or years. And that’s okay. You have to be patient. That’s why you need to start now. <laugh> communicating your value and communicating what you do, because it takes a long time especially, and the more money that it’s involved, the higher they call it, um, a high involvement decision, high involvement pur purchase, the higher the involvement, the more money it takes. Uh, the longer it takes for people to decide. So start now. They have
To awareness. They have to know about you, interest. You give ’em a little bit more information, right? They go to your website. Maybe they check out your social media. That’s why you need to be putting out social media and putting content out. They’ve heard of you, they’re interested. They go, okay, it’s okay. I think I might like this. I think I could use that painting. Or, wow, that musician. That’s kind of my style. Then they go to desire, right? And so by the time you, you hear from them, they’re already down by desire in action. And the sale is easy cuz they’ve done the first two steps. Never forget the sales funnel. Understand you can’t skip steps. So start now gently having people move in there and let them leave whenever they feel like it. That’s why a funnel is smaller at the bottom than at the top right, cuz you’re gonna lose some folks along the way.
You don’t want to be the person at the bar asking you the other person to be married after 30 minutes. That’s gross. Nobody likes that person. But it can be the other way around where you’ve learned to know each other and you’ve learned to love each other. And so when you ask for that action, they’re ready. They’re like, I couldn’t, I was, I couldn’t wait for you to ask me that. Wouldn’t that be nice? Isn’t that great? That’s how sales should be. Okay? You can do this. You just have to follow the steps and be patient. I love you.