What to do after a sale
You've made a sale; you've just won a customer. You must now do all you can to retain new customers; consider making them advocates for your brand. That requires creating customer touchpoints which may take the form of customer feedback surveys (these show you're listening and looking to improve your offering, as well as providing valuable data), product guides, technical assistance and special offers or a combination of the above.
Sales funnels are built on data and tracking behaviour and engagement. Lead scoring can help you identify where prospects are in the funnel. The more you talk and engage with your audience, the more insight you will harvest and the more effective your funnel will be in converting sales.
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 |  |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
North Ireland |
|||
| Company population now: | 77,420 | |
3.57% |
| Incorporations in past 3 months | 2,670 | |
44.0% |
| Investment in past 3 months: | £16.5m | 77.2% | |
| Grants in past 12 months (April 2022 - April 2023): | £69.1m | |
104.2% |
| Spinouts: | 54 | ||
Diagram title v2
Awareness
Activities focus on raising recognition of the brand and highlighting the problems the product or service can resolve.
Interest
The business gathers more detail about interested prospects through engagement, allowing more targeted marketing.
Desire / decision
The prospect indicates an interest in the solution, and the business uses tactics (discounts, special offers etc.) to help the customer decide.
Action
The prospect makes a first purchase, and the business acts to maintain engagement with the new customer (feedback forms, technical assistance etc.)
How you raise awareness
The logic follows that the more prospects you gather at the top of the funnel, the more customers you're likely to convert at the bottom. It is about spreading the message to as much of your target market as you can service and typically uses advertising, media, events and content.
Some customers may not realise they have a problem or be aware of the benefits to their lives of resolving it. That will determine the content needed to get their attention. It requires focusing on using the appropriate social media channels for your market and publishing content that might intrigue or inform them about the problem you're fixing and the solution. This also involves getting the basics right, such as a functioning website with a compelling proposition that ranks well on search engines.
How you engage interest
By attracting prospects to your website or app, you can get to know the customer better through a value exchange. The prospect provides details about themselves for access to additional content, a discount or a special offer; this exchange provides you with a tangible lead which you can follow up. This can also allow for more targeted marketing in the future. In a B2B relationship, that could be providing access to a piece of research or thought leadership, or in a B2C relationship, a time-limited voucher.
It may be irrelevant how good your pipeline is to this stage if the business does not follow up prospects at this step.
How to turn desire into a decision
The prospect is keen on a solution and interested in your offering. The aim here is to narrow down the customer's choices through incentivisation. Therefore, you can bundle benefits such as free shipping, a discount code or a bonus product into your offering and influence a customer close to the point of sale.
Key takeaways and next steps
- Work on what you can do to improve your customer research. Think about how you might find out what is most important to them.
- What sort of content fits the target market? What channels do they use?
- Identify what tools, such as CRM you need to learn about to help build an efficient sales funnel.