How to Create a B2B Sales Funnel to Increase Sales
Build an effective B2B sales funnel that boosts conversions and drives growth with strategies tailored to each buyer journey stage.
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The B2B buying process is changing. Today, buyers research information independently before engaging with a sales representative. Research from Gartner shows that nearly 70% of the buyer's journey is complete before a prospect even reaches out to a sales rep. As a result, sales reps must adapt their approach to this new environment where prospects are more informed and have distinct preferences on how they want to engage with sellers.
This is where sales funnels and sales acceleration software come in. A sales funnel helps you understand your prospects' journey and how you can personalize your approach to improve their experience and, ultimately, close more deals. This post will cover creating a B2B sales funnel to increase sales, with insights into using Aomni's sales intelligence software for a smarter, data-driven approach.
What Is a B2B Sales Funnel and Why It’s Important To Build One?
A B2B sales funnel is a customer's journey to purchase your products or services. It starts with getting awareness of your brand’s exclusivity and ends with a final deal closure. The higher people are in your sales funnel, the less likely they are to buy from you. Therefore, to nail your B2B sales strategies, not only do you need to have a sales funnel in place, but you also need to have enough volume of people in your sales funnel to start cranking out sales.
Why B2B Marketing Funnels Matter
The more people you have inside your sales funnel, the more likely you are to convert new customers. There are lots of different reasons you need a B2B marketing funnel. I’ve selected five of the most important benefits, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. The B2B customer journey is more complicated and needs more oversight.
Modern customers value experience, which is why customer experience is the number one priority for 45.9 percent of businesses. It allows you to coordinate the efforts of different team members.
You can maximize the efficiency of marketing tools to automate large parts of the process. It helps you spot inefficiencies and optimize your marketing process. These are significant benefits, but the most crucial benefit of a B2B marketing funnel is the provision of a plan. You’re not taking ad-hoc actions; you’re taking strategic steps to move the prospect toward purchase.
Understanding the Stages of a B2B Sales Funnel
In the awareness stage of the B2B sales funnel, potential customers become aware of their pain points or wants. This can happen naturally and through your influence, such as running marketing campaigns across various advertising platforms.
Prospects can also discover new brands by researching related topics, which is how they’re drawn into the awareness stage. You can position yourself to gain visibility in these instances by doing content marketing and SEO. If you have marketing knowledge, you should start setting acquisition engines according to your marketing strategy through:
- PPC
- SEO
- Inbound marketing
If you need more marketing capabilities, consider hiring someone to take on this endeavor or an SEO agency. B2B sales funnel examples for the awareness stage:
- PPC landing pages
- Social media posts
- YouTube videos
- Quora or Reddit answers
- Podcasts
After becoming aware of their need, they may be motivated to the next stage, where they seek a reliable source of information to discover more about the business and its products.
Interest: Getting to Know the Solution
As prospects move on to the interest stage, they begin to look into resources to learn more about solutions to their need. This is where they learn about your solution rather than necessarily about your products or services. They may or may not assess specific solution providers, such as your:
- Company
- Competitors
Instead, they seek to answer general “who-to” and “why should I” questions regarding their need.
In this stage, prospects move from being Pain-Aware to Solution-Aware and finally to Product-Aware (where they learn about your product or service). When they learn about your company, they will most likely learn about your competition. Now begins the evaluation stage, where prospects try to decide if your offering is best for them.
B2B sales funnel examples for the interest stage:
- Product-centric blog posts
- Product pages
- FAQs
- White papers
- Webinars
- Conventions
- Guest posting
Evaluation: Justifying the Purchase
In the evaluation stage, you demonstrate how your solution best fits the prospect’s requirements. At this point, your principal aim is to establish a relationship with your leads to determine their final goals.
This is accomplished by providing the necessary content to address and remove fears and concerns, build trust, earn credibility, and communicate your value-added instead of your competition's.
You should also apply voice-of-customer (VoC) copywriting to your landing pages, develop a consistent brand voice, and perfect your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). All these should be tailored to your target audience.
B2B sales funnel examples for the evaluation stage:
- Pricing page
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- Product documentation
- Product features page
- Product comparison tables
- Featured product reviews on known industry websites
- Thought leadership articles
- Video testimonials
- Customized solutions
- Client Brand logos
- Customer Reviews
- Trust badges (G2, Capterra, Trust Pilot, etc.)
- Awards
- Security and compliance credentials and certificates
- Privacy policy
- Proper CTAs
Once you convince prospects to try your product, they move on to the next crucial step—engagement. The purchase stage is straightforward daily. It is the culmination of what could easily be months of hard work. When the prospect makes the purchase, they become a client. That's good for you. Now, it’s time to deliver on what you promise.
Engagement: Helping New Customers through the Transition
During the engagement stage, your leads will interact with your sales team. The first step is to qualify your B2B funnel leads based on their position in the buyer’s pyramid (not to be confused with the buyer’s journey). An SDR usually does this.
Prioritizing Qualified Leads
Having your salespeople spend time on a prospect that is not likely to buy can drain your valuable resources. Once a prospect is qualified, your primary aim is to build a personal connection with the buyer and demonstrate your offering’s best aspects. Most importantly, you should do what you can to establish trust and friendliness between the buyer and your salesperson.
Building Trust and Demonstrating Value
You’ll want to show how your business can adequately fulfill their needs if they invest in your products or services, present the implementation process, and explain what comes next. It’s imperative to communicate your understanding of the buyer’s problem areas and offer specific solutions.
B2B funnel examples for the engagement stage (assets and actions):
- A product tour or walkthrough
- A live demo
- Educational presentations
- Email signature marketing campaign
- Newsletter
- Onboarding
- Technical support
- Special discounts
Purchase: Closing the Deal
The purchase stage is straightforward daily. It is the culmination of what could easily be months of hard work. When the prospect makes the purchase, they become a client. That's good for you. Now, it’s time to deliver on what you promise. B2B sales funnel examples for the purchase stage:
- Contact page
- Telephone number
- Subscription form
- Saved items page
- Cart
- Cart abandonment automated email
- Payment page
- Thank you page
It may all end here, but not really. If you deliver great value to your customers, you will likely add a stage to your funnel—loyalty.
Loyalty: The Ultimate Goal of Every B2B Sales Funnel
The loyalty stage is the most crucial stage of the funnel. Post-purchase engagement is
critical for building a B2B sales pipeline since it keeps clients happy. And happy clients will stay with you and endure more bugs than dissatisfied and ignored customers.
According to HubSpot, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase company revenue by 25-95% and ultimately grow Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Enthusiastic customers will likely become brand advocates, provide testimonials, and leave great reviews. If you build enough advocates, you will position yourself as the go-to brand in your niche through word-of-mouth.
B2B sales funnel examples for the loyalty stage:
- Product onboarding (for SaaS B2B funnels)
- Email marketing nurture campaign
- B2B Email marketing
- Upsell proposals (email automation)
- Customer success calls
- Branded email signature
- CSAT emails
- Product engagement tracking
- User interviews
- Events and webinars
- Product updates
Empowering Sales Teams with AI
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. Our key features include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted Account Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool
AI-Powered Sales Enablement for Better Results
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Try Aomni Today
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
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How To Create a B2B Sales Funnel To Increase Sales
Set the Scope: Define Your Target Audience for the B2B Sales Funnel
To create a sales funnel that increases revenue, you must first define the audience that will benefit most. Write down exactly who this funnel is for. What does your ideal customer look like? What are their interests? What are their present circumstances?
Narrowing your focus will help you build a relevant funnel to a specific target audience rather than anyone who stumbles across your brand. One of the most common mistakes people make is creating a marketing funnel that needs to be broader.
Gather the Team and Define Specializations
Creating a B2B sales funnel is a collaborative project. Tasks at the top of the funnel are considerably diverse and require different skills than those at the bottom. A seasoned sales manager understands that only some people can do all of these tasks with the same degree of efficiency. At this point, it is critical to have a specialized team.
Of course, sales specialization follows a purchasing process logic and allows you to concentrate on each step of the B2B sales funnel. For instance, you should recruit project managers to address the demands of your existing clients if your funnel stretches beyond the purchase step.
Conduct Research to Inform Your B2B Sales Funnel Strategy
Due to optimism, research helps you discover the small parts of the strategy you might overlook. It enables you to understand the current market and gives you the ability to predict your prospects’ behavior. It shows you how to direct the prospect down the funnel so that you have the highest chance of bringing the most potential customers to your desired result intellectually and emotionally. Make a paper flow chart showing all the specific phases and sub-steps along the way.
Bring in Your Marketing Department to Create a Cohesive Approach
Many businesses have experienced clashes between marketing and sales. With widespread Internet connectivity, the buyer’s journey has become increasingly digitized in recent decades.
The Evolving B2B Sales Landscape
According to Gartner, 27% of B2B customers conduct independent web research before purchasing. Previously, the goal was to close the sale. It is now to provide informational value. Make Marketing and Sales work hand in hand to win at both ends, give the consumer a product or a service that positively impacts them with a solution they desire, and increase company revenue by doing so.
Launch the Sales Funnel and Test Performance
Even after launch, you can still test the stages and compare results like:
- Offers received
- Number of CTA clicks
- Landing page visits
By continuous testing, your team will quickly see all your prospects’ actions, giving you time to adjust where necessary to avoid losing a customer. Don’t try to repair and enhance your funnel all at once; instead, focus on tools and case studies that can help you measure whether your strategy is up to par.
This iterative method is effective because it feels manageable and fits into both your and your team’s hectic workday.
Calculate Your Conversion Rates to Find Areas for Improvement
You should continually strive to improve your company's weaker areas. Display only relevant information about your company to help potential buyers choose you over other suppliers. Analyzing your B2B sales funnel will provide you with useful data. By keeping track of the number of customers at each step of the buying funnel, you can compute the conversion rates between these stages.
Monitoring and Optimizing Your Sales Funnel
The work continues after you launch the sales funnel. Utilize key indicators to help you track your progress. Use a top-down approach to see how well your funnel is functioning. This will allow you to discover where your teams have excelled and assist you in identifying the areas where you need to improve.
Related Reading
- Sales Industry Trends
How is a B2B Sales Funnel Different From a B2C Sales Funnel
B2B sales funnels are, by nature, more convoluted. Data shows this: the average B2B sales cycle is 84 days, compared to 29 days for B2C. Why? Higher stakes, significant investments, and a group rather than an individual often make the decisions.
B2B buyers involve 38% more people in decision-making than B2C buyers. This complexity extends out the sales cycle, requiring more detailed and targeted stages to nurture the leads effectively.
B2B decision-making implies more layers of approval and a thorough evaluation process of the product-company fit, often requiring even more tailored content to address specific needs. Key content types include:
- Case Studies: Demonstrate real-world applications and product effectiveness.
- Whitepapers: Provide in-depth analysis of issues and showcasing solutions.
- Product Comparison Tables: Highlight unique features and distinguish products from competitors.
- Thought Leadership Articles: Build authority and trust within the industry.
- Educational Presentations: Inform and engage potential customers on relevant topics.
- Video Testimonials: Offer social proof from satisfied customers.
- Product Tours or Walkthroughs: Give a detailed view of the product.
- Live Demos: Showcase the product in action and address live queries.
- Customized Solutions: Provide personalized options to meet unique business needs.
B2C Funnels Are Simpler and Shorter
B2C sales funnels, on the other hand, are shorter and simpler because buying from a customer becoming aware of making a purchase is straightforward as, in most cases, buying impulses are created by emotions and impulse needs rather than long-term consideration and research.
The purchases are usually of lower value than the B2B transactions, and the process is simple in that they are individual purchases made for personal use, thus simplifying the decision-making.
5 Expert Tips To Help You Best Approach the Stages of Creating a B2B Sales Funnel
1. Be the Beacon
Insight sellers know how to engage buyers while defining the vision and influencing the buying process. Key strategies they use include:
- Inspiring with ideas: Drive buyer thinking and set agendas that align with the buyer’s goals.
- Using Insight to Sell: Follow a proven pattern to connect key points and build relationships.
- Positioning as the Best Choice: Guide buyers toward making the best business decision, emphasizing value and fit.
- Collaborating on Ideas and Strategy: Work with buyers to develop new ideas and define the path to achieving them.
By connecting the dots and engaging collaboratively, insight sellers help buyers feel confident in their decisions.
2. Focus on Fit
Sellers must keep bad-fit prospects out of their pipelines to improve conversion rates and create happier customers. This starts with a specific prospecting plan and campaign. You can also avoid pursuing the wrong prospects by being more honest and transparent in answering the question, "Is this the best option for the buyer?"
In addition, scrutinize where in the journey the buyer brought you in. We’ve found that sellers brought in by buyers at the execution phase are way behind the ball and won’t have much chance of closing.
3. Know Thy Competitors
Sales organizations that stay ahead of the competition don’t do so by accident. They run extensive, ongoing competitive analysis, from features/benefits breakdowns to product positioning and third-party industry analysis. One beneficial strategy is to review lost deals to see what stakeholders talked about when they brought up the competition.
4. Automate Where Applicable
Across most B2B sales funnels, there’s ample opportunity for sensible automation. Consider the repeat tasks that sellers spend time on daily, like remembering to schedule meetings or CRM hygiene. Increasingly, sales organizations are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to not only automate repetitive to-dos but also uncover new insights and reporting about everything from pipeline health and forecasting to best practices and coaching.
5. Train for Success
Train sellers on your B2B sales funnel. Sellers should understand the fundamental stages as you’ve built them and develop an instinct for spotting winners and sensing when and how to handle specific scenarios. As part of this training program, look for ways to refresh sellers on an ongoing basis, tailor coaching programs, and provide the right tools and aides.
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- Sales Industry Trends
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- Gong vs Salesloft
- HubSpot Sales Hub Features
- Best Sales Software for Small Business
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- How to Increase Sales Revenue
Try Our Sales Intelligence Software for Free Today
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.
Our key features include AI-powered prospect and account research, comprehensive account mapping and planning, data-driven sales strategy development, automated call preparation, personalized AI agents for sales optimization, an AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes, and an AI-assisted Account-Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool.
Empowering Sales Teams for Success
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose account executives, account managers, and customer success managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to more extensive deal closures and increased promotion opportunities.
Elevating Individual Sales Performance
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to elevate their performance, close more substantial deals, and accelerate career progression. Our platform transforms how B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success.
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
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