At Sales Funnel Professor, we use our funnel builder experience to first audit funnels and then help clients build out their funnels, often with a mix of our team and their team working together.
Unlike the typical agency model, upskilling our clients’ teams is part of our culture. And they love it! Even though we get touch-1 conversions from various digital tops of funnels, referrals are our favorite, and we get them because our clients love what we teach them.
And teaching is critical because there are so many low-quality posts and gimmicky software companies out there acting like they insert magic to solve your sales problems.
Some of them can help incrementally but many cause so much confusion that they’re likely pinching more sales funnels than they are expanding.
Table of Contents
So What Is a Sales Funnel Builder? Hint: It’s Not Software
Funnel Builder Meaning: Revenue Architect
Tools Are Your Construction Materials
Branding and Messaging Are Your Architectural Designs
Your Sales & Marketing Team Are the Construction Crew
Funnel Builder Secrets: Tools Matter but Not as Much as Branding & Messaging
Ready to Talk About Your Own Funnel Building?
So What Is a Sales Funnel Builder? Hint: It’s Not Software
If you’re on LinkedIn or small business forums like Alignable, you’ll see lots of advertising by companies that sell their software by positioning it as a “sales funnel builder.” Relying on a ‘one and done‘ approach in sales and marketing can be a costly mistake, as it often overlooks the importance of nurturing long-term customer relationships.
Most of these tools like HighLevel or ClickFunnels are really equivalent to small pieces of more developed CRM software like HubSpot or SalesForce that encourage users to use lead magnets paired with endless streams of spammy automated emails.
Can this approach help a company that really struggles to tell its story or articulate its value proposition?
Yes, incrementally (if your prospects aren’t likely to immediately flag your emails as SPAM and get your servers blacklisted), but you can’t build a great business with incremental gains.
But how can you 5X your revenue in less than a year? SPAM isn’t the answer.
Funnel Builder Meaning: Revenue Architect
Architects are great at listening to the desires of their clients and steering them towards sound decisions for both aesthetics, materials, and construction methods.
If you’re building a home on the beach in a hurricane zone, you’re going to need really strong foundations and might want to consider stilts.
If you’re building a mountain cabin 20 miles from the closest paved road, you might not need air conditioning but a diesel generator would be money well spent.
The meaning of funnel builder is someone who knows what to apply to specific situations to become ROI-positive on sales and marketing investments immediately and then grow rapidly if that’s the desire.
Funnel builders choose appropriate tops of funnels:
- PPC
- SEO
- Organic Social
- Paid Social
- Influencers
- ABM/Outbound Marketing
- Partnerships
…and the list goes on.
Then the middle of the funnel is often a website but can also be an app store or review site profile, physical location, or other space for educating prospects and building trust. Newsletters or triggered emails fall into this category.
And then finally, there’s the bottom of the funnel where deals close or purchases are made.
Your funnel builder will first listen to what you have to offer and then be able to help you hone in on who out of all the prospects in the world should care about it and why. You don’t want to boil the ocean.
Based on that research, your funnel builder will tell you which funnels to build in what order and when you can expect to be ROI-positive.
Tools Are Your Construction Materials
Your beach house needs pressure treated stilts. Your mountain retreat needs a generator.
If you are going to use Organic Social, you’ll need brand pages on the platforms where your prospects hang out. Use LinkedIn if it’s a serious B2B offer. TikTok and Instagram are great if you are a B2C e-commerce brand.
If you’re going to do PPC as top of funnel, you need to create Google Ads on that platform unless your audience isn’t likely to be searching the web in a traditional way. For younger or more consumer audiences, you might test something like Hulu Ad Manager so you can show ads within streaming video instead.
On a website, a landing page is designed to speak specifically to one audience about one value proposition.
Branding and Messaging Are Your Architectural Designs
Do you want a beach house or mountain cabin that you’re actually excited to spend time in? Anyone can draw a picture of a house.
A great architect will be able to create a home that will withstand the elements (functional) while also delighting you as the owner.
In sales funnels, what you say and how you say it matter a lot. GoHighLevel and ClickFunnels suggest a specific type of PT Barnum-esque messaging that will immediately cause serious B2B buyers to think your company is a fraud but works well for consumer goods.
If you’re a software company and have a sloppily-designed website, your potential buyers will assume your software is equally sloppily-built and won’t buy it thinking it’s likely to be buggy or not work at all.
Your Sales & Marketing Team Are the Construction Crew
An architect produces a set of plans called blueprints. They show a particular home from each side and from the top down.
They have loads of requirements.
Your sales funnel builder has to communicate those requirements. A a project management board in Trello or Asana can serve as the blueprints but live meetings and coaching are required to be sure that each piece of the funnel is constructed correctly. CRM hygiene is critical, especially in an ABM funnel.
There are 100,000s of people with Google Ads certifications. 95% of them don’t understand the basics of marketing.
An influencer who has figured out Instagram or TikTok’s current algorithm behavior thinks they are ready to be a fractional CMO.
Your funnel builder needs to be able quickly understand what each team member’s true comprehension level and capabilities are and then give them sufficient guidance so that they can execute their part of the funnel on a continuous basis.
If coffee is for closers, would your sales team be caffeinated? Your funnel builder will need to teach them how to manage the bottom of your funnel.
If not, your beautiful house won’t keep the rain out or might collapse the next time a tropical storm blows through.
Funnel Builder Secrets: Tools Matter but Not as Much as Branding & Messaging
If you use LinkedIn, you know that tons of vendors are selling meeting setting as a service. Our staff get these solicitations 2-4 times a day.
And guess what…all of these companies use tools that functionally do the same thing. They blast LinkedIn and email outreach at massive volume and pray that they land on someone that isn’t already numb to these pitches.
And why do so many of these companies fold or have to pivot? Because they don’t have a single point of differentiation.
At Sales Funnel Professor, we actually ask: “Thanks for reaching out. I get these offers constantly. Do you do anything proprietary or differentiated? If so, we would be happy to interview you for our blog.” And then it’s crickets.
Your sales funnel builder will help you put the tools together to measure your sales cycle at every stage, but the real magic happens when the branding and messaging are so aligned with the target persona that a prospect immediately concludes:
- This company understands me and my pain points intimately
- What they offer was built specifically to solve my problems
- If I pay them, I will get the solution
- They will not do anything outside of their offer that actually harms me
When each of your funnels conveys that messaging in the same terms your prospects use, the result is a super efficient sales funnel with a high touch-1 conversion rate.
Ready to Talk About Your Own Funnel Building?
If you have a brand new product or service, our job as a sales funnel consultant is to help you build a funnel that is ROI-positive as quickly as possible.
With the right research and deployment execution, brand new sales funnels can be ROI-positive within a month.
For companies that are stuck/stagnant, this opens up a world of possibilities for growth.
For existing products and services, our funnel building services often start with an audit of what you already have.
You may be using tools or messaging that make no sense and you can stop wasting that money and reallocate it to what makes sense for your specific situation.
Our job is guide you and your team to the right choices and then deploy them using some combination of your team and ours. Along the way we teach you how it all works and how to use your newfound knowledge to accelerate your growth even faster.
Boost your sales and streamline your marketing strategy with expert funnel consulting from our team of seasoned professionals.
Sound good? Schedule a free funnel building consultation with our team, and we’ll be happy to share a preliminary assessment.
Further reading: What is hotjar?
Find out how a Sales Funnel Consultant can help you with your ABM Funnel.
