Everything a provider needs to know about the sales funnel
The sales funnel is a marketing tool that guides the customer towards a purchase and illustrates the path they must follow to complete it.
Just like a traditional funnel, the sales funnel starts wide and narrows down to the actual customers. This way, your company will filter out those who are truly interested in buying, and you can give more attention to the cases that will yield results. In this sense, understanding at which stage the business opportunities of interest are located will allow your company to have increasingly effective communication.
A good sales funnel serves to segment the target audience and naturally guide the lead to purchase. Educating the consumer about the need to use internet access services contributes to the decision-making process.
Furthermore, it should be shared between the marketing and sales departments so that the strategy is consolidated.
In the case of internet service providers, the sales strategy generally has two intentions: to reach those who do not have internet access, or those who are dissatisfied with their current service. However, we find a wide range of customers who are at different stages of the funnel. To help your company reach all business opportunities, we will teach you how to use the sales funnel in 4 practical and applicable steps for internet service providers.
1 - Learning and discovery
At this stage, the lead is not yet able to identify that they need internet access. It is up to your company to guide and educate the market about the need for internet access.
The goal of this step is to make the customer realize a need that hadn't even crossed their mind before. To create a new desire that becomes a priority in their decision-making. In the case of internet providers, it's easy to create the desire for something essential like internet access today. The hardest part is making that desire their number one priority.
Let's take an example: Paulo is moving out of his parents' house to live alone. He never thought about signing up for an internet service, as that wasn't his responsibility at home. When does signing up for an internet plan become a priority on his wish list? From the moment Paulo understands that having internet access in his new home is essential.
2 - Recognition of the problem
The problem recognition stage sparks the lead's interest in seeking more information about the difficulty discovered in the previous stage.
Following Paulo's example, his real problem is: He needs internet in his new house. Now it's time to explore some mental triggers to draw attention to the opportunity. In this way, he will be able to move to the next stage of the sales funnel, in order to learn more about your provider's solutions.
3 - Solution Consideration
Now comes the product/service comparison phase. This is where we must showcase your company's values and why people should buy from you. But it's not just "good" customer service that will make the difference: a strategic package is needed to achieve better lead engagement.
At this stage, Paulo has already discovered that he has a problem and what benefits will be offered to his personal and professional life by subscribing to an internet package. This is the time to show why he should buy your product.
Here, it's crucial that the articles or communication produced create a sense of urgency. This way, the client won't give up on solving their problem and will be able to move on to the next step.
4 - Purchase decision
In the closing stages of a deal, we have several ways to approach the customer. This could be through WhatsApp chat, on the website, on social media, by phone, or even door-to-door.
At this stage, Paulo has already researched other companies and reached the final stage of the purchase decision on your website. Now is the time to turn Paulo into a customer. Try to align your strategy with your company's marketing and sales departments.
Now that you know how the sales funnel works for internet providers, it's time to put it into practice. I recommend that you hold an internal meeting with your team, segment the target audience you want to reach (with the possibility of having more than just one) and develop some personas for each target audience (on average 3 or more).
To the point where you can identify all potential customers for your provider and know how to effectively reach each specific segment. Small actions will bring big results.
But there's no point in going through all these steps and then delaying the verification of the client's viability, as they are already in a hurry to solve their problem. That's why we developed Loki, a tool integrated with OZmap, which instantly verifies a client's viability and immediately starts their registration process. Focused on the commercial area of your internet provider.
Excellent article! Another Marketing tip for Internet Providers that I would like to give is to use an online plan sales tool specifically for Internet providers with coverage validation and contract acceptance. There is another very interesting article that talks about this here: https://blog.conecte.ai/blog/marketing-para-provedores-de-internet-como-conquistar-mais-assinantes
I highly recommend reading! Hugs! Gustavo