Maximize conversions with the right sales funnel software

Capture prospects through multiple channels, automate outreach, track deals, and drive them to closure with a sales funnel software.

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Mar 28, 20248 MINS READ

Jane's company sells project management solutions to other businesses, and it's growing. Leads come in from various sources—the company’s website, marketing campaigns, and events. But managing this influx of leads is turning out to be difficult. 

Her small sales team lacks a structured way to track potential customers, and some slip through the cracks. Without a consistent approach to nurturing, some prospects receive generic follow-ups that fail to convert. Some prospects’ interest in free trials and demos is promising, but the sales team needs a system to turn those interested leads into paying customers.

This is where a sales funnel comes in. A sales funnel is a visual representation of the journey a prospect takes from initial awareness to final purchase. Sales funnel software can provide Jane's team with the tools they need to streamline their process at each stage of this journey, ultimately closing more deals.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is just like any other funnel—wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. The top represents the number of prospects who are aware of your offering thanks to marketing efforts, while the bottom represents prospects who are closer to becoming paying customers.

The standard sales funnel consists of three stages.

Awareness: The prospect becomes aware of your product or service and how it can address their pain points.

Evaluation: The lead actively compares your solution against others, weighing pros and cons and business fit.

Decision: The lead decides whether to purchase your product/service.

At a more granular level, the sales funnel may have more stages, according to the industry or the organization. For example, a sales funnel can have stages like awareness, interest, consideration, negotiation, decision, or renewal.

What is sales funnel software?

Sales funnel tools help accelerate and automate the conversion process from lead to customer. Companies generally use a CRM software for sales funnel management and effectively automating their sales process. This streamlines lead tracking, ensuring timely follow-ups and personalized communication, providing a superior customer experience. Additionally, sales funnel tools often provide valuable analytics insights to gauge the effectiveness of different campaigns and identify areas for improvement.

Benefits of sales funnel software

From startups and small businesses to mid-market and enterprise, sales funnels can benefit organizations in different ways.

  • Accelerate the sales cycle: Sales funnel software automates tasks like lead capture, qualification, and follow-ups, allowing you to move more leads down the funnel without taking away from your sales team’s selling time.

  • Go after the right leads:  By identifying your most promising leads, sales funnel software helps ensure your sales team's time and energy are invested in the opportunities with the highest chance of success.

  • Clear view of the customer lifecycle:  With multiple views (table, list, Kanban, etc.) of the customer lifecycle stages, your team gets a clearer view of where prospects are in the funnel and how they interact with your brand.  

  • Convert better with personalized campaigns: Personalize your communication and tailor your approach to each lead's unique needs. This creates a more relevant and engaging experience.

  • Data-driven decision-making: Get in-depth analytics about key metrics such as conversion rate and sales velocity. Use these insights to iterate and refine your process to drive better results.

What to look for in a sales funnel software?

  • Funnel-building involves having the right setup in place to maximize conversion as leads move from TOFU to BOFU, and minimizing dropouts along the way. The right sales funnel software can help you see a spike in revenue and sales productivity, but finding the right one that fits your business can be tough. Below is a list of things to look for.

  • Lead management: At any point in time, salespeople need to know where their leads are in the funnel, and be aware of the activities they are performing to move them to the next stage.

  • Segmentation and personalization: Customize your approach according to each group of prospects. Segment your audience based on their level of engagement and demographics. Send targeted email campaigns and communication that resonates better, leading to increased conversions.

  • Multichannel engagement: Engage prospects through email, phone, SMS, and social media integrations. Interact with prospects on the channel of their choice.

  • Automation features: Boost sales productivity by automating non-sales activities. Schedule emails, follow-ups, and nurture sequences, allowing you to focus on strategic activities.

  • In-depth funnel analytics: Track performance metrics across the funnel in real-time and optimize your strategy. For instance, you can understand where your leads are dropping off and plug leaks in those sections.

  • User-friendly interface: Prioritize ease of use. Choose software that is intuitive and allows you to build funnels quickly, even for beginners and non-technical users.

While the above are key features, consider these additional points to build more effective sales funnels.

  • Integrations: Ensure your chosen software connects smoothly with your existing software (marketing automation, drag-and-drop landing page builder, email marketing platform, etc.

  • Affordable, yet scalable: Choose a solution that fits your current budget but can scale up as your business grows.

  • Customizable: Check if your sales funnel software can be customized according to your industry and business to ensure minimum disruption to existing sales processes.

Why Freshsales is the best sales funnel software?

Freshsales is an AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) that lets you streamline your sales process, boost conversion rates, and maximize revenue by offering a powerful suite of features that support every stage of the sales funnel.

At the top of the funnel, AI helps you identify the hottest leads to go after based on scoring criteria like engagement levels and demographics.

Freshsales can then track prospects through their lifecycle from lead capture to order. With a customer 360 view, you get a comprehensive picture of the prospect, and you can tailor your communications to resonate better. You can then nurture prospects with personalized communication across multiple channels, including phone, email, SMS, and chat.

Never miss an appointment, meeting, or follow-up. Automate manual tasks to save time and effort. Freshsales covers every aspect of the funnel, and helps you go beyond the funnel to aspects like upselling and cross-selling that result in better customer lifetime value.

Lead management and deal tracking

Manage all your deals in the pipeline visually as they move from stage to stage. Get actionable insights on your deals, which ones are likely to close, the ones that have been in the pipeline for too long, and take the right decision. You can even set up multiple pipelines for various functions, and create weighted pipelines to understand the likeliness of deals moving forward from one stage to the next.

Web forms: Pull contacts directly from your website into your CRM as soon as they enter their information through Freshsales web forms. You can easily create customized web forms without coding knowledge. 

Embed them on your sales pages or emails to capture interested leads. You can also connect your existing web forms to Freshsales, and leads will automatically flow into your CRM, ready for nurturing.

AI-powered lead scoring: Freddy AI, Freshsales’ native AI, can help salespeople go after the hottest leads. Freddy can help score contacts based on factors like demographics and the leads’ engagement with your business. Freddy automatically tags the best contacts as “Likely to Buy” and recommends the next best action to engage with them.

360 customer view: With a comprehensive view of the customer, you can quickly view customer information from different touchpoints like email interactions, social media profiles, website visits, and phone calls.

Users can choose to visualize the data in a format that best suits their needs: tables, lists, or Kanban. This allows for salespeople to quickly get the required context, personalize content and conversations for each lead, and boost conversion rates. Learn more about customer 360 view

Connect with customers anywhere

To reach leads faster and more effectively, you need to be where your leads are. Freshsales offers built-in email, phone, SMS, chat, and integrations with popular social media channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Ace lead nurture with email campaigns: Freddy AI can craft compelling subject lines and content that highlight your offerings and resonates best with prospects. Freddy also looks out for and identifies out-of-office autoresponder emails from leads.

With Freshsales’ two-way email sync, you can connect your email inbox to Freshsales. Your calendar and existing conversations are automatically synced, and all incoming messages are mapped to the respective contacts and deals.

Learn more about email integration

Built-in phone: Freshsales puts the power of a built-in phone on your computer or smartphone. Connect with leads faster, auto-log, and record calls. Track your team's calls with built-in analytics to uncover performance trends and drive more conversions.

More sales productivity with automation

Automation can help your sales teams automate repetitive, mundane tasks. This ensures that they can focus on what they do best—selling.

Workflows and sales sequences: CChoose from preexisting workflow templates or create your own to execute an action if a certain condition is met. For instance, whenever a new contact is added, you can add a follow-up task and send an email reminder to the sales owner. With sales sequences, you can create, send, and track personalized outbound campaigns.

Territory management: Freshsales helps you organize your sales efforts with flexible territory management. Segment leads using custom rules based on geography, company size, or other relevant factors. Define territories for targeted lead assignment, and streamline your sales process. Automate round-robin lead distribution within each territory.

With Freshsales, you don’t need to worry about having a separate automation tool, and a bunch of other software tools—it’s all built in.

Close deals faster with CPQ

Accelerate deal closure with customers at the bottom of the funnel. The CPQ module in Freshsales helps you quickly create detailed quotes with accurate pricing, scope of services, implementation timelines, and post-sales support. You also get built-in eSignature functionality.

Manage contacts and stay updated anywhere 

Use the Freshsales anywhere from the convenience of your mobile phone, whether it runs iOS or Android. It offers a powerful mobile application that allows you to set up meetings, book cabs, set reminders, get push notifications, and even capture every little detail with voice notes. And the best part? You can access all your data even while you’re offline, and it’ll all sync the moment you go back online.

Learn more about the mobile application

Supercharge your sales funnel with a CRM software

Unlock seamless sales funnel optimization and drive growth with Freshsales CRM

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FAQs

What is the difference between sales funnel and sales pipeline?

When we talk about the sales funnel, it’s about the journey from the buyer’s perspective. On the other hand, a sales pipeline represents the stages and activities that convert leads from a seller’s perspective. For instance, “awareness” is a sales funnel terminology, while the corresponding stage in the sales pipeline is prospecting/lead generation.

What is the difference between a sales funnel and marketing funnel?

The goal of a marketing funnel is to attract, engage, and nurture a broad audience while generating interest in your brand. It’s focused on generating leads and handing over quality leads to sales. Some marketing tools and functions include: website builder, landing page builder, email automation, A/B testing, pop-ups, and more.

The sales funnel deals with qualified leads with purchase intent. The aim is to convert leads to paying customers and foster customer loyalty. However, in many cases, these functions overlap, and the concepts of marketing funnel and sales pipeline are used.

What sales funnel metrics should I consider for success?

The standard KPIs for sales funnels are as follows:

  • Conversion rates: The percentage of leads moving between stages.

  • Lead velocity: The speed at which leads move through the funnel.

  • Average deal size: The typical value of closed deals.

  • Time on stage: How long leads spend on average in each stage.

What are the top funnel building apps and solutions available in the market today?

Freshsales, Clickfunnels, Leadpages, Active Campaign, Getresponse, Keap, Hubspot, Systeme.io, and Wishpond are a few sales funnel builders available in the market today.