A Complete B2B Sales Funnel Guide

In the world of commerce, there are plenty of business models. Therefore, sales funnel systems must be properly developed to take advantage of anticipated B2B marketing results. It takes some decoding to enter the B2B Sales Funnel world; only some people are versed in trade terminology.

This blog post takes a deep dive into these advanced strategies, breaking down the different steps of a B2B Sales Funnel, guiding generative ways to put it together, and providing everything else in between that leads one to success while trading on the B2B market.

What is a B2B Sales Funnel?

Understanding the B2B sales funnel is essential in ensuring your business runs as smoothly and cost-effectively as possible. A B2B sales funnel is the process by which businesses identify and convert leads into customers.

• The funnel usually begins with an outreach process to find these potential buyers through online channels such as social media or email campaigns.
• Then, companies decide to qualify the leads to understand better the customer profile and what they are looking for.
• Finally, firms engage in closing efforts to turn leads into paying customers and manage customer relations for future opportunities.

Applying this understanding of the B2B sales funnel can improve customer acquisition and ensure your company remains competitively priced in today's market.

B2B Sales Funnels Vs. Sales Pipelines: The Difference 

B2B sales funnels and pipelines are different methods for advertising and selling products or services but with similar motivations.

A B2B marketing funnel is focused on generating leads through multiple channels until those leads become paying customers. The funnel typically starts with marketing activities that generate interest in a company's products or services. These leads are then passed on to the sales team, which works to convert them into customers.

The sales pipeline manages an existing buyer's journey from initial contact to a closed deal. The goal of a sales pipeline is to move a customer from one stage of the process to the next in an organized manner.

The three major differences between B2B sales funnels and sales pipelines are:

• B2B sales funnels are focused on generating leads, while sales pipelines are focused on closing deals.
• B2B sales funnels typically have more stages than sales pipelines,
• A B2B Sales funnel includes additional steps such as qualification and appointment setting, unlike sales pipelines that focus more on conversion.

Both B2B sales funnels and pipelines offer tremendous value when incorporated into a larger B2B digital marketing strategy, and they can be effective tools for increasing revenue. But if you need clarification on the two, here's how to pick one for your business.

You must choose the one more aligned with your company's goals and objectives. For example, a B2B sales funnel may be your best option if your goal is to generate more leads. However, a sales pipeline may be better if your goal is to close more deals.

Everything To Know About B2B Sales Funnel Stages 

In B2B marketing, a sales funnel is often used to identify key stages customers go through when purchasing clearly. A B2B sales funnel typically consists of six distinct phases. During each stage, B2B buyers exhibit different behaviors and motivations, and their buying journey needs to be managed accordingly. Understanding how B2B customers move through these various B2B sales funnel stages can help B2B marketers develop an effective B2B marketing strategy. So without further ado, let's dive deeper to understand these six stages of the B2B Sales Funnel.

Stage 1: Awareness

Stage one in B2B marketing is awareness. This stage involves potential customers discovering your business, learning about your offerings, and beginning to familiarize themselves with them. 

Building brand awareness and reach through engaging content can help target customers become more aware of what you offer and encourage them to progress further along the B2B sales funnel. At this stage, B2B marketers need to employ effective email campaigns, content marketing, influencer collaboration, and social media channels for maximum exposure in B2B markets.

Stage 2: Interest

At this stage, B2B marketers must create content and campaigns to capture the attention of their potential customers. This includes:

• Developing compelling messaging and creating content that establishes trust and nurtures prospects by providing helpful advice on topics related to their industry or creating customer success stories showcasing how a B2B product or service helped solve a problem for one of their clients.

• Additionally, B2B marketers must ensure that they are giving prospects the necessary information about their B2B product or service:

• Its capabilities
• Pricing
• Availability, and
• Easy accessibility of this information.

Carefully crafted B2B marketing strategies formulated at this stage will make potential customers interested in the B2B solution.

Stage 3: Consideration

The B2B marketing funnel culminates at the consideration stage. At this stage, customers have likely learned about the business and products or services in the awareness and interest stages. Now they are ready to compare those offerings to those of competing businesses.

B2B sales teams must focus on delivering information that speaks to potential customers' needs while positioning their competitors' offerings in a less appealing light. In many cases, this includes:

• providing research studies,
• detailed product/service information,
• pricing guides,
• customer testimonials,
• case studies and more.

Businesses that can create a strong message of why their offerings are better than others will be more successful in converting B2B leads into shoppers.

Stage 4: Intent

At this stage, potential customers show a real and tangible interest in buying the product or service offered by investing time in research. They are beginning to compare different vendors that can provide them with what they are looking for and decide who to purchase from. The intent is the B2B sales funnel stage in which companies typically invest the most resources, such as:

• personalized sales pitches,
• detailed proposals,
• customized demos,
• improved online portfolio presentations,
• in-person meeting requests, etc., to convert prospects into buyers.

Stage 5: Evaluation

Stage 5, i.e., the Evaluation stage, involves assessing the customer's needs, providing feedback to gain insight into their satisfaction levels with your product or service, and further qualifying leads before moving on to the Sales stage.

During this time, it's important to attend to customer anxieties and build trust between you and them by providing support. Moreover, pay close attention to feedback to determine what can be improved to become even more successful in B2B sales.

Stage 6: Purchase

Purchase is the last and final stage of the B2B marketing and sales funnel. This is when all of the hard work comes together, and a customer decides to invest in your product or service. This stage requires you to be well-prepared to handle any closing questions and ensure that all the necessary paperwork is properly filled out promptly. 

It is also important to remember that positive rapport should continue with the customer after purchase. Responding promptly to inquiries, giving proper discounts when needed, and supporting current customers are all key details during this B2B sales funnel step.

How to Create a B2B Sales Funnel?

A B2B sales funnel is a necessarily structured approach to B2B marketing, which organizes and tracks various stages in the B2B purchase process. 

Did you know that 74.6% of B2B sales take at least 4 full months to close a deal? Not pleasing, right? Well, to help you create an effective and result-driven B2B sales funnel, let's dive deeper.

1. Set Your Goals

Before beginning any B2B marketing funnel or B2B sales funnel process, it is essential to have a well-defined set of objectives. When you take the time to write down your goals, you are 20% more likely to reach them, so you must have a plan in place for achieving success. Consider focusing on metrics like:

• total sales, 
• average sale value, 
• conversion rate, 
• percentage of repeat sales, and 
• customer satisfaction 

These are all the key elements you need to assess your B2B success!

It's also smart to remember that each audience may require its own B2B journey. Hence different goals and performance indicators should be set based on target audiences. Finally, to ensure your B2B strategies remain effective, pay attention to intermediary steps along the way and evaluate as necessary.

2. Understand Your TG, aka Target Audience

Understanding your B2B customers is critical in B2B marketing and sales funnels. Knowing their needs, wants, and pain points help you to provide the right content at the right time to maximize results. In addition, the more you know about your intended customer base, the better you can target them with offers tailored to their specific desires and needs.

With this information, B2B businesses can better engage customers, turning prospects into leads and leads into sales. With that knowledge, B2B firms become empowered to craft and execute a powerful strategy to suit their goals best. Wasting money on B2B digital marketing without first understanding your target customer is ineffective; it pays to go the extra mile.

3. Organize Your Team

To create an effective B2B marketing and sales funnel, it's essential to bring together various elements. This involves more than one team working seamlessly- marketing and sales must be on board to maximize impact.

Where communication falters between these two departments, your B2B funnel will experience inefficiencies. For those yet to leap B2B funnels, it's important to get support from stakeholders and demonstrate how this new approach will benefit everyone involved in terms of ROI.

4. Choose the Right Channels

To reach your target audience, you need to get into B2B marketing funnels and B2B sales funnels in areas where they usually hang out. This can vary widely depending on who you are trying to reach. Learning the demographics of your intended audience will help you better identify suitable platforms for outreach.

"For example, only 13 per cent of adults aged 65+ use Instagram."

Therefore, if reaching elderly individuals is part of your B2B sales funnel strategy, it would be best to look elsewhere to maximize your reach. Instead, hang out where your target audience does and tailor your content accordingly; this tactic could be invaluable in achieving success with B2B marketing funnels.

5. Create Your Assets

As you construct your B2B marketing and sales funnels, you must remember that their content needs high quality. From educational pieces near the top of the funnel to elaborate comparisons at the bottom, having assets that serve their intended purpose is key.

As such, it is wise for marketers to assess what content is necessary to fill every step of their B2B marketing funnel and invest in appropriate budgets to obtain this goal. And judging by recent studies indicating a rise in content budgeting among two-thirds of marketers, many also recognize this principle.

6. Track Your Progress

Ensuring your B2B marketing and sales funnel remain effective over time should be prioritized. It's not a 'set it and forget it' situation but requires a specific approach to improve results and optimization.

Start tracking the impact of the work you've done so far, paying attention to the finer details which will help take it to the next level. That way, your B2B funnel won't look the same in two years – it will continue to improve, thanks to all your hard work!

How Can You Streamline Your B2B Sales Funnel? 

Streamlining your sales funnel is essential for B2B marketing success. A sales funnel is the customer journey from initial contact to conversion. It takes careful attention to detail to ensure that sales cycles are as efficient and effective as possible. 

By identifying potential pitfalls and streamlining processes, you can maximize sales opportunities with existing clients while also increasing your chances of acquiring new customers in the long run. And here's how you can streamline your B2B sales funnel in 6 easy ways.

1. Define your ideal customer

The first step to streamlining your B2B sales funnel is to define your ideal customer. Who are you selling to? What are their needs and pain points? What are their demographics? Once you clearly understand your ideal customer, you can create targeted content that will speak directly to them.

2. Create targeted content

Once you know your ideal customer, you can create targeted content that will speak directly to them. This could include blog posts, eBooks, infographics, webinars, and more. The goal is to create content to help your ideal customers solve their problems.

3. Drive traffic to your content

Once you have created targeted content, you need to drive traffic. Several ways to do this include social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO).

4. Convert leads into customers

Once you have driven traffic to your content, you need to convert those leads into customers. This can be done through various means, such as offering a free trial or discount for your product or service. You can also use lead magnets, such as eBooks or white papers, to entice potential customers to give you their contact information.

5. Nurture your customers

After you have converted a lead into a customer, it's important to nurture that relationship. This could involve sending them follow-up emails, providing them with helpful resources, or offering them exclusive discounts on your products or services.

6. Measure and optimize your funnel

Finally, it's important to measure and optimize your funnel on an ongoing basis. This means constantly testing different elements of your funnel and making changes based on what is working and what is not. By constantly tweaking and optimizing your funnel, you can ensure that you get the most out of your B2B sales efforts.

Digitizing the Sales Funnel and Sales Pipeline

Digitizing the sales funnel and sales pipeline can help businesses in several ways.

• First, it can help businesses to automate repetitive tasks such as lead generation and follow-up. This can allow salespeople to focus on more value-added activities, such as building relationships with prospects and closing deals.

• Additionally, digitizing the sales process can help businesses track data more effectively and make better resource allocation decisions.

• Finally, digitizing the sales funnel and pipeline can help businesses improve communication between different departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer service.

Proven B2B Sales Funnels + Case Studies to Take Notes From

Using the Value Ladder sales funnel, you can effectively create a robust B2B funnel. Findings have revealed that sales funnels are 6x more profitable than typical websites!

To begin, start with:

• A lead magnet and
• A frontend offer,
• Then build out with a middle offer, backend offer, and continuity program.

And by the way, so you know, the easiest sales funnel you can use to grow your company is the quote sales funnel. It works well for service-based B2B businesses.

Here's the gist:

• Instead of jumping in and trying to sell to potential customers, have them fill out a survey to get a tailored quote.
• Once they submit their answers, contact them for a no-cost consultation where you can understand their needs better, put forward your services, and provide a tailored quote.
• Though not naturally appealing as it relies on obtaining quotes rather than other offers, this funnel is still quite successful - especially when selling services priced via project (not set flat fees).

B2B Sales Funnel Case Study in Review: Piano.io

                                                                                                                                          Source

What: With customers expecting tailored experiences, the demand for platforms like Piano is high. According to a press release from TechNavio, the AI-based personalized marketing industry is projected to grow at an impressive 19.17% annually until 2025. 

Moreover, Piano's cloud-based SaaS platform makes it possible to deliver a more personalized customer journey to businesses. Therefore, understanding how Piano's SaaS sales funnel works can be invaluable in leveraging this feature and meeting customer needs effectively.

What Steps Were Taken For a Successful SaaS B2B Sales Funnel?

1) Homepage: The homepage is appealing to the eye, with its clean, modern design and plenty of blank white space. KoMarketing has found that 76% of B2B buyers rely on three or more channels for their research. Hence, making it easy for users to access the site by logging in with a social media account is an excellent choice. First impressions count, especially regarding potential customers researching your product or service - so ensure your homepage ticks the right boxes!

                                                                                                                                          Source

Another great selling feature of their website is the show of trusted badges they’ve catered to their services over time. This brings instant trust and credibility without any testimony or validation.

                                                                                                                                          Source

2) Resources: With more than enough content options, such as articles for organic traffic, client success stories, and e-books/guides, plus news updates and their own Traffic Magazine and documentation of best practices -- all available without requiring an opt-in -- there's no shortage of useful resources at Piano's website. Like a few other SaaS websites, Piano has an Academy section housing numerous educational videos, ensuring the overall learning experience is top-notch. 

Additionally, Piano suggests topic filters so users can conveniently call up the material they need without having to wade through unrelated stuff; now, that's what we call beating customer expectations!

3) Demo: Trying out Piano can be a truly immersive experience, with plenty of free content to explore. The demo CTA is actually tasteful and unobtrusive--it's more like a gentle suggestion in the background rather than an aggressive pitch or demand. 

This allows you to focus on the awesome features of the Piano without distractions or unwanted pressure. Ultimately, it's up to you whether or not to take advantage of their demos; either way, it'll be pleasant and stress-free.

4) Pricing Page: If you're in the market for a high-ticket product, you may appreciate the thoroughness of the purchase process. But there needs to be a pricing page to give you an idea of what to expect, and HubSpot research suggests that longer forms like this 7-line demo request form can reduce conversion rates.

Despite this, it could be that narrowing down more serious prospects with more detailed information; it will make for a more meaningful exchange — resulting in higher conversions overall.

B2B Sales Funnel Tips

Business-to-business (B2B) sales funnels are a great tool for marketing products and services to other businesses.

• Starting at the top of the funnel, creating an engaging visual on the landing page, such as an attractive image or product demo video, is important.

• Additionally, customer testimonials and industry case studies can help demonstrate potential solutions to visitors. By incorporating compelling copy into emails and webpages that explain each step of the product/service offering, prospects should receive a clear message of how they will benefit from using your product/service.

• Lastly, it is essential to customize content depending on where a prospect is in the buying cycle, which aids in prompting quick responses & actionable results.

To make it easier, B2B sales funnels provide concise information about their products & give customers multiple pathways to take toward their goal--ensuring quality leads for years to come!

Sales Questions To Ask at Each Sales Funnel Stage 

Ques 1: What are the differences between a B2B sales funnel and B2B marketing funnel?

Answer: A B2B sales funnel focuses on closing deals, while a B2B marketing funnel focuses on building relationships and gaining market awareness.

Ques 2: Do I need to create a sales and a marketing funnel for my B2B business?

Answer: While both a sales and marketing funnel are important for any B2B business, it's ultimately up to you as the business owner to decide which funnel is more beneficial for your particular needs. Depending on your goals, one might be more suitable than the other.

Ques 3: How much does creating a B2B marketing funnel cost?

Answer: The cost of creating a B2B marketing funnel can vary, depending on the type of content and resources you plan to use. Generally speaking, most businesses should budget for approximately 3-6 months of content creation and research to develop an effective funnel.

You can enlist the services of professionals who specialize in crafting effective B2B marketing funnels tailored specifically to your business. Many firms offer packages with prices ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, depending on the complexity needed for your business.

Ques 4: How much does creating a B2B sales funnel cost?

Answer: The cost of creating a B2B sales funnel depends on the complexity and scope of your project. For example, the cost would increase significantly if you plan to use an automated platform or require custom programming. Generally speaking, most businesses should budget for at least 6-12 months of content creation and research to develop an effective funnel. The range may vary from $3000 to $15000, depending on the level of complexity of your business.

Conclusion

B2B sales funnels are an effective way to market products and services to other businesses. Therefore, ensuring that each stage of the funnel has engaging visuals and copy that speaks to your prospects' needs is important. Customizing content depending on where a prospect is in the buying cycle is also beneficial.

At RevenueHero, we specialize in creating custom-tailored B2B sales funnels for our clients that help generate more leads and convert them into customers quickly and effectively. You can contact us by taking simple actions. Sign up or Book a demo today to get the process started. RevenueHero looks forward to helping you create a successful sales funnel that will generate quality leads and maximize your ROI!