The ‘Hammersley Sales Funnel’ for Ecommerce Sites

This is my first post on this subject and I hope I can make myself understood as this is THE most important tool I have to increase the revenue of an ecommerce site. I think this post should really describe what a sales funnel is and then later posts can refer back when we actually get into the nitty gritty of making it work.

You may have heard other people mention that sales are a system. This is something that I did not realise back when I was a fresh out of uni salesman for IBM. Most sales training just talks about how to get a sale when in front of a customer. Then marketing training in turn talks about how to create a brand. The gap in the middle is called ‘direct response marketing. Direct response actually delivers leads to sales people that are likely to close. With an ecommerce site, the website IS the salesman and so your direct response marketing is KEY.

By using direst response marketing to get likely prospects to hold up their hand and say I am interested is the start of your sales funnel. Capturing these peoples details is the first step and with an ecommerce store this is usually their email address and first name (always get their first name at least). Once you have these leads you business needs a way of converting these into customers. Seems simple yes? Do you capture email addresses and then just send offers and newsletter?

This sales funnel is where I spend most of my time research and effort. This is because the power to increase my customer revenue lies here. The cumulation of this effort has allowed me and my team to put together the ‘Hammersley Sales Funnel’ but more about that in other posts.

Once you have the lead or email address of a prospect you have to turn them into a customer. How you do this depends on your product. However imagine you are face to face with someone who has just given you their email address, would you expect them to buy from you right away? Or would you talk to them first and understand a little bit about them, find out what issues they are facing and then when they are ready suggest a product? Of course you would. Jumping straight to selling does not work. With an ecommerce site the power comes from being able to automate the sales funnel, converting leads on masse into sales.

To convert a lead your sales funnel needs to be doing the following things for you

1. Creating authority – showing that you are THE company to be looking at in your area
2. Creating interaction – showing them how to interact and bringing them in from the cold
3. Creating rapport – making your company a familiar name to them
4. Creating trust – showing them that you can be trusted and you do what you say
5. Modelling them – teaching them how you want them to react, when they should be buying

The media for the sales funnel will depend on the average order value of your site. If you sell high end goods then you could use direct mail, email and telephone. But if you are like most ecommerce site and your average order is 30 – 150 then you will be using email primarily unless you can profile higer spenders and follow these up differently.

You will find that hot leads convert right away and it is the warm leads that you sales funnel will catch. Many buyer will take longer to convert and can take upto 10 weeks to make their first purchase. The man power to follow up with a customer personally for 10 weeks is not cost effective and so email is a good way to automate it.

I would love to hear about methods you have used to warm leads into buyers online? What top two questions do you have about sales funnels. I promise I will respond to all comments!

Thank You

Mark