Close the sale or build a long term relationship? What’s right for your sales funnel?

Any seasoned sales associate will have run into the conundrum of knowing when to close the initial sale vs. understanding that with a little extra time the client will turn into a multiple sales opportunity. Much like the phrase, “having your cake and eating it too,” determining which course of action is right, will depend entirely on your sales funnel and your understanding of the client audience. In fact, when you don’t have a complete understanding of the latter two entities, you will not only create a disconnect between your business and clients, but your sales will also suffer.

How Do You Know What’s Right For Your Sales Funnel?

At a cursory glance a sales funnel has a few key components:

1. Top of the Funnel — This is the “awareness” stage, whereby potential clients (or existing clients) are interested in learning more about a specific topic, product, service, etc.
2. Middle of the Funnel — This is the “evaluation stage,” and the prospect is heavily researching whether or not to use your company’s products or services.
3. Bottom of the Funnel — Known as the “purchase stage,” this is the opportunity where the conundrum of “one time sale” vs. “long term relationship” is most often experienced.

Moving beyond a cursory glance, you will find that each stage of the sales funnel must work in harmony. For example, if a prospect works his way from the top to bottom, but then takes the road towards long term relationship, you must immediately ensure that he is inserted into the top of the funnel and that he is given the marketing materials that he needs to have a positive journey back to the final purchasing stage. It is for this very reason that according to a HubSpot study 76 percent of marketers produced more content in 2016. It is also the reason that 88 percent of B2B marketers decided to create custom content marketing in 2016.

The Delivery Of Custom Content Marketing To Increase Long Term Sales Relationships

Custom content is the key to removing the “conundrum factor” from the “close the sale or build a long term relationship” question. Take, for example, our earlier prospect who chose the road towards long term relationship. He doesn’t want to see the same general marketing information that is presented to any prospect who falls into the sales tunnel. Instead, he wants to see customized content marketing that speaks to his specific needs — needs that have been established during his first trip through the sales funnel.

Delivering the custom content that is needed to build long term sales relationships, is made easier when you use Vuepak to create marketing packages that contain the video, audio, images, or documents that speak directly to your client’s unique inquiries. Upon receipt, you can track how many times each marketing piece was viewed, the length of time that each piece was viewed, and whether the content was downloaded for future use. Armed with this knowledge, you can further fine tune your custom content marketing efforts to expedite the sales process, while simultaneously enhancing the long term relationship. In short, the question of “close the sale or build a long term relationship,” should be answered with a resounding, “With Vuepak I can do both, because they both will be right for my sales funnel.”