The B2B sales funnel that gets results

Understanding your B2B sales funnel

When it comes to B2B sales it can be helpful to divide your conversion process into multiple stages. Then you can map how your sales and marketing teams move your prospects down that funnel. This is called a B2B sales funnel. A clearly defined sales funnel will help your team determine what marketing and sales tactics will help move prospects toward conversion. 

B2B sales funnel stages

To properly understand the journey a potential customer goes through you need to divide your B2B sales funnel into stages. It might be helpful to look at a few sales funnel examples so you know what the most important conversion benchmarks are. 

In its most basic form, B2B sales funnel stages include:

1. Lead generation

The first stage is lead generation. You need to make sure you regularly engage your audience through various channels to figure out whom you should be targeting as a potential lead for your business. Many B2B companies use a prospecting tool to aid this process. 

2. Lead nurturing

The second stage is lead nurturing. In this stage, you should be interacting regularly with those who have expressed interest in your brand, using relevant content that will help you keep your company in their minds. You want to showcase how your product or service can relieve their pain points.

3. Conversion

The final stage is customer conversion. You’ve done everything you can to help the lead move down the funnel and they are ready to make a purchase.

B2B sales funnel template

Each B2B sales funnel is unique to a company’s service or product. To properly customize your sales funnel stages, you need to understand the entirety of the sales funnels from outreach to close. It will help you figure out how your sales and marketing teams should be interacting with their leads at each stage of the process. 

Ultimately, there are a lot of sales funnel stages that you need to think about. Looking at your B2B marketing funnel stages will help you learn more about your B2B sales funnel. It can also be helpful to look at a B2B sales funnel template with a variety of stages to get ideas on how to refine your own. 

B2B sales funnel best practices

If you’re wondering how to build a funnel from scratch, you need to learn more about B2B sales funnel best practices. 

Understand your potential client’s pain points

The best way to stand out from other companies in your industry is to understand what problems your potential customers may face. Take the time to research your target audience. Get to know their goals and needs. Once you understand this you can illustrate how your product or service with help solve their issues. 

Be mindful of the law of friction

It’s not uncommon for a company’s conversions to increase when they removed distractions or extra work from the process. The point is that you need to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to convert. Move everything else out of the way. If your prospect is free from distractions, they will be more likely to convert.

Consider the law of scale

This law states that if you build your sales funnel in a way that can scale up your distribution, you will reach a wider audience. When creating your B2B sales funnel consider your growth goals. There are tools like sales lead databases that can make it easier to scale.

B2B sales funnel metrics

The best way to optimize your B2B sales funnel is to track key metrics. The B2B metrics will help you see what’s working and what's not. Then you will figure out how to move people through your sales funnel effectively and accelerate your sales pipeline. There are different metrics for different B2B sales funnel stages. 

For example:

• Time your prospects spend in each stage of your funnel
• Sales cycle length
• Overall churn rate

B2B sales funnel conversion rates

So you may be asking, “how can you determine your sales funnel is working well?”

The most important B2B metric to track is your conversion rates. The B2B sales funnel conversion rate is the percentage of people who you successfully move through the funnel to purchase your product or service. 

Tools to help fill your B2B sales pipeline with qualified leads

Ideally, your sales team should be focusing on leads that have already been qualified. That way, you know they are getting the most out of their time. Consider using a tool that can help you determine warm leads vs cold leads. That is where UserGems can be helpful. In addition to helping find new leads, it can help you determine what leads are most likely to convert. If you want to effectively move people down the sales funnel, put UserGems to work for you.