Three Sins of Sales Funnel Management

Funnel management is key to sales success, but how does it apply to your business? What role does it play in your business?

In the case of sales funnel management (similar to other business areas/initiatives), it’s important to take the time to re-think older strategies & re-work them accordingly. Now more than ever companies are looking at the sales funnel as a business process for selling. However, what we’ve been seeing over the last couple years is companies committing the three sins of sales funnel management:

1. Changing the stages: companies are treating their sales funnels as a bi-cycle-funnel and thinking that’s enough to change selling behaviour.
2. They are throwing a technology solution at a process problem: companies think by putting clients into their CRM that they are going to see changes.
3. They aren’t providing coaching around the funnel: companies aren’t training their managers to coach, they just assume the managers fully understand the funnel & leave them to do it their way. This directly ties to the lack of funnel inspection going on as well – no funnel audits combined with no coaching produces undesired results.

In order to manage the funnel more effectively, sales managers have to take a step back and realize that changing stages and putting clients into a CRM isn’t enough; they have to provide proper coaching and training for the funnel and its processes.

To avoid sinning, companies have to produce a funnel blueprint that brings all the components (people, technology & process) together. This blueprint should not only go into detail about the stages, but also how to execute the strategies properly.