Your sales funnel is the lifeblood of a business.

A well-designed B2B sales funnel will help you not only generate more sales but also allow you to identify ways to improve and refine your sales process.

Despite all these benefits, 68% of B2B companies still lack a clear understanding of their sales funnel.

This post will explain what a B2B sales funnel looks like and the five key stages. We'll also show you how to increase your conversion rate at each stage.

• What is a B2B Sales Funnel?
• Lead Generation
• Lead Nurturing and Qualification
• The First Meeting
• Closing the Sale
• Retention and Referrals

The humble sales funnel has seen many revisions since its debut in the late 19th-century.

A sales funnel may have three to five stages, depending on who you speak to. But, in essence, all sales funnels function the same.

The sales funnel is an approach to helping businesses understand and visualize the steps that go into turning someone from a stranger into a paying customer.

Understanding the structure of your sales funnel will help you identify key points where customers are leaving and how to get them back in the pipeline.

Every business is unique and therefore needs a different sales funnel. However, every B2B sales funnel must include these crucial steps:

B2B sales funnel is the complete journey of a lead and how they are taken to each stage of the sale.

You have the complete stranger at the top of your sales funnel. They may not even know that they are experiencing a pain point or that there is a service that can help.

This stage of the sales funnel aims to determine the best way to get the attention of potential customers while also establishing your authority.

Although it might seem tempting to think that this stage of the sales funnel has one goal, it is actually what leads to statistics such as how more than half of your leads are not a good fit for your company.

Just like junk food can cause empty calories in your body, so is building a sales funnel that only allows people to enter it.

Understanding your ideal customer is the key to filling your sales pipeline CRM with quality leads.

Only when you know who your ideal customer is, you can start to develop strategies and tactics that target them.

This could be about creating and promoting content you know your ideal customers will enjoy, such as educational blog posts or downloadable lead magnets. It could also refer to developing a strong prospecting strategy that only targets qualified leads.

This step is what most B2B companies will skip to their disadvantage.

It's easy to forget that the art and science of B2B sales is as much about timing as it is being right. If you engage with a lead too early, they may have lost interest or choose to work with another company.

This stage of the sales funnel has two main goals: to educate leads who have not yet made the decision to buy and to identify those who are.

It depends on how complicated your sales process is. The time it takes for a lead move from one stage to another can vary from several weeks to several months. Implicit estimates that it takes a lead 84 days to get to this stage in the B2B sales funnel.

It's vital to have a lead nurturing program in place. Lead nurturing campaigns are proven to increase sales by up to 50% and a 9.3% increase in sales.

A drip marketing strategy is a great way to nurture leads. This involves sending emails that are regularly engaging leads with valuable content.

A typical B2B customer will read five to ten pieces of content before purchasing.

This leads to the question: How do you determine if someone is qualified and ready for sales?

A lead may tick all the boxes for what constitutes an ideal customer, but that doesn't mean they are ready to speak to a salesperson.

Let your CRM do the hard work for you by automating lead scoring. Your lead generation CRM can automatically assess the quality of leads based on individual attributes and actions taken. This will ensure that your salespeople spend their time with high-quality prospects.

Your prospect should be interested in your products but needs more convincing to become a customer. This stage is where your salespeople come into play.

The first meeting can be viewed as either a discovery call or a formal product demo, depending on the structure of your sales funnel.

The first meeting is your opportunity to build trust and a relationship with a prospect to make them a customer.

This stage is the most crucial in the B2B sales funnel. The first sales conversation can make the difference between moving on to the next stage or dropping out completely.

The Gong research team analyzed 2 million sales calls and found that sales reps who focused on 3-4 problems faced by prospects were the most effective.

Focusing on more than five problems can lead to diminished returns. This exposes the salesperson to the risk of making prospects' problems trivial or spreading their attention too thin.

Gong found that the top 5-10% sales reps used a structured approach to all sales calls.

This stage is where all the hard work pays off. Take care not to fall at the finish line.

This is the narrowest part of your funnel. It is where your customer is on the verge of making a decision about whether to do business with your company. But something is holding them back.

They could be still comparing you with your competitors, have a few questions to answer, or still evaluating the value of your proposal.

Use the ASK process to deal with indecisive buyers:

• Align priorities. Using the information from your customer research and your meetings with sales reps, show that you are both aware of the buyer's needs and challenges.
• Get the buyer's commitment.
• Keep the relationship alive. You don't have to end the relationship just because someone says no.

There is a possibility that they will become customers in the future. However, any feedback they may have regarding their experience with your sales funnel can also be valuable to help you improve and refine your B2B sales channel.

This is the last stage of the traditional sales funnel. However, since we are talking about building a modern, powerful B2B sales channel, there's one more important step.

Many business owners believe that their relationship with customers ends when the sale is complete.

Business owners are often unaware that 84% of buyers start their buying journey with a referral from a colleague or friend. Leads generated through referrals are three to five times more likely to be converted than leads from other channels.

Once a prospect becomes a customer, it is important to look for ways to keep them coming back.

Asking for referrals is a simple way to fill your sales pipeline with quality leads.

While it is easy to get a referral by asking customers who know people who might be interested in your product, you can go further and create a formalized referral program using your CRM.

Use your CRM to identify and reach your most happy customers and create an automated email drip campaign to delight new customers.

Convert more in all five stages of your B2B sales pipeline.

While no two B2B sales funnels will be the same, every one that succeeds will likely include the following stages.

You could further optimize your sales funnel by continuously split-testing, experimenting with new ideas, and finding what works. It all depends on how your sales process looks.

Businesses of all sizes have used sales funnels for over 100 years to grow and scale.

Keep experimenting and optimizing!

We've covered all the key stages of a sales funnel. Your business may have a different structure, but you should still analyze your results and continue to improve your sales funnel.

Sometimes, you might feel stuck or not getting the results you desire.