The Ultimate Sales Funnel Blueprint Contents Introduction: Laying The Foundations For Success 1. The 3 Magic Growth Variables 2. The 4 Life­Phases of The Customer Relationship (Or, Why Customers Relationships Really Aren’t Any Different…)

The 3 Major Mistakes of a Low­Converting, Unprofitable Funnel 3. The 8 Levels of Customer Value 4. The 7 Practical Steps of a High­Converting, Highly­Profitable Funnel Introduction: Laying The Foundations For Success You’re about to discover the blueprint for building a sales funnel to dominate ANY niche. This system is used by major corporations across a multitude of markets to grow their business and optimize profits. All successful businesses ­ from fast food chains to e­commerce giants ­ follow this model. And it’ll work for your business too. This system works because, as you’ll see, it’s based upon universal

business principles and fundamental psychological insights. Each successive element of the system you’re about to learn builds upon the last:

The system is built upon the foundation of the “3 Magic Growth Variables”. These are Universal Principles of Business Growth ­ increasing these 3 variables should the be the goal of EVERY sales funnel.

The “4 Life­Phases of the Customer Relationship” is the journey you have to take each customer through in order to maximise each of the “Magic Growth Variables”. So this psychological layer builds upon the business principles.

We then zoom­in on the 4 Life­Phases to look at the “8 Levels of Customer Value”. As your customer moves through each of these levels they become more valuable to you ­ i.e., they become more likely to buy from you and help grow your business. Understanding this simple scale is critical if you want to effectively target ­ and re­target ­ your prospects.

This naturally follows on to the “7 Practical Steps of a High­Converting, Highly Profitable Funnel” ­ i.e., the steps that YOU have to take to walk your prospects through each step of their journey… This is the real “meat” of the funnel. Everything is leading toward you putting these 7 steps into practise.

So without further ado, let’s move on to the foundation of the funnel…

The 3 Magic Growth Variables Smart marketers and entrepreneurs know that there are 3 basic ways to grow your business:

1. Increase the number of buyers 2. Increase the average transaction value 3. Increase the number of transactions per customer

In other words, every one of your sales funnels should be designed to...

Get you more buyers... Get your customers to open their wallets wider…

And then…

Get them coming back for more…. A funnel designed to optimize these 3 variables is a funnel designed to... ...maximise your total profits. Which is the ultimate goal of any business, right? Ideally you will look to increase all three of these Magic Growth Variables. But in practise your focus will differ depending on your product and market forces. For example, if your market is small, a strategy that focuses purely on increasing the number of buyers will soon run out of steam. So when you’re building your funnel, you need to ask yourself the following kinds of questions to decide where to place you focus:

How big is your market? (larger market = more emphasis on variable 1 ­ increasing number of buyers)

What is your average customer’s budget? (larger budget = more emphasis on variable 2 ­ increasing transaction value)

How large is your product portfolio? (larger portfolio = more emphasis on variable 3 ­ increasing number of transactions per customer)

So now you know the key variables that you’re seeking to increase for your business ­ and the forces that focus your funnel. You’re able to “see the forest”, your higher business goals. So the next step is to learn the psychological principles that will help you to achieve these goals...

The 4 Life­Phases of The Customer Relationship Our funnel blueprint is based upon the insight that loyal customers do not come to you already loyal ­ they go through a process in which they become loyal. And you have to treat people in your funnel according to where they are in this process. You wouldn’t propose marriage on the first date, right? (those drunken Vegas hitches rarely work out!). Well customer relationships are just the same. With this metaphor in mind, take a look at an overview of the 4 Life­Phases of The Customer Relationship...

So these are the 4 stages you must go through to create a loyal, long­term customer...the kind who’ll keep coming back for more, and put a regular paycheck in your pocket.

1. ATTRACT: Make a promise that draws your target prospect to your brand/product. This is the phase in which you make your prospects feel that you are relevant to them and could potentially offer them something of real value. Commitment and risk at this stage should be minimal to avoid scaring off your prospects.

2. BUILD COMFORT: Make them trust that you’ll deliver on your promise. This is the phase in which you begin to increase intimacy with your lead. You take them on a low­risk “trial run” to show them that they’re safe to commit more to you. Like going for coffee to suss each other out.

3. SEDUCE: Create the more intimate setting and “seal the deal”. This is the phase in which you increase intensity, up the hard sell ­ because your customer now believes you will deliver value. Now you can offer your core products.

4. COMMIT LONG­TERM: Finally, get them to invest in you for the long haul. At this point you could forget about your customer and chase after new buyers. But this would mean that you’d fail to maximise the 3rd Magic Growth Variable ­ the number of transactions per customer. Which would be a MASSIVE mistake (we’ll go into more detail on this below ­ see Major Mistake #3).

Sounds simple when you put it like that, right? But you’d be amazed to know how many funnels fail to follow this simple sequence…

The 3 Major Mistakes of a Low­Converting,

Unprofitable Funnel You often learn more from your failures than your successes. If you look across all unsuccessful sales funnels, they tend to make one or more of the following mistakes.

Major Mistake #1: Attraction But No Comfort. This is typically where your prospect likes what you have to say (stage 1, check) ­ but then you jump straight to trying to seduce them without building comfort first. That is, you try to sell them your core, premium products before they trust you. Sure, you'll make some sales. But the most you can hope for here is a one­night stand. Your customers may feel duped and won't come back or tell others about you. A variation of this mistake is failure to deliver a Lead Magnet (a free gift) of

real value. Your prospects will not give away their email address for something they perceive to be worthless. So even though you’re not getting any money directly for it, your Lead Magnet must still be something of value. If not, you’re failing to deliver on your first promise, so what reason do your leads have to trust you in future? Your Lead Magnet may not be your direct source of revenue. But trust us ­ it’s worth investing time in to get it RIGHT, because it impacts all subsequent stages in your funnel. This is the most common mistake made, especially by small businesses. SOLUTION: Provide a Lead Magnet that immediately delivers what you say + an unexpected bonus of value to trigger reciprocity. Then follow this up with the comfort building techniques, leading to a “Trip Wire” offer (we’ll explain this in more detail later).

Major Mistake #2: Getting Stuck In The “Friendship Zone” This is where you skip straight to building comfort without FIRST creating attraction. Sure, you'll win some fans ­ your list might get bigger. But you end up stuck in the friendship zone, with a bunch of leads but no buyers. The biggest cause of this mistake is failing to attract people on the basis of a promise relevant to your core offer ­ e.g., getting leads using an ipad contest as your lead magnet ­ resulting in a list of FREEBIE SEEKERS. This type of “lead” is not a real lead. They’re not really attracted to your business, because they do not intend to become a buyer. SOLUTION: To avoid this, prequalify your leads with a lead magnet relevant to your core offer. You can further qualify your leads with a qualification

question. Leads must be converted, slowly but surely, to buyers. This should begin with your lead magnet, and continue with the email follow up, which should lead naturally on to your next offer, which applies further solution to their pain points.

Major Mistake #3: “Hit and Run” This is where you end your funnel at the seduction stage, thereby failing to create a return path for your customers. It’s tempting to consider the job to be done once you get someone to buy one of your core products; to start chasing after the next lead. But to put the size of this mistake into context, consider the fact that many successful businesses talk about the “80:20 Rule” ­ whereby 80% of their revenue comes from just 20% of their customers. That means that the top 20% of their customer base spend 16x more money with them than the rest of their customer base! Each one of these top customers is worth 16x more to you than your average customer. So if you’re NOT creating funnels that nurture repeat purchasers, you’re throwing away 80% of your profits! SOLUTION: Create an “inner circle” of high value customers. Maximise your communication channels and return paths ­ via email, retargeting and social media.

*** These 3 Major Mistakes are the most common reasons for a sales funnel that fails to convert prospects to buyers, and fails to convert buyers to long­term customers. But if you guide your prospects through the correct sequence ­ create

attraction, build comfort, seduce, then commit long term ­ you’ll have a funnel optimized to increase the “3 Magic Growth Variables” and maximize your profits...

So now that you know the journey you need to guide your customers through, it’s time to zoom­in on these phases ­ to take a look “inside” the funnel and identify the specific levels of customer value. What is happening to you customers as they go through these stages? So to make our funnel more actionable, we find it useful to break the 4 Life­Phases down into 2 levels each ­ resulting in…

The 8 Levels of Customer Value

So let’s take another look at our model, now factoring in these 8 Levels of Value. If you successfully guide a customer through the 4 Life­Phases, these are the transitions they’ll go through:

* HVC = High Value Customer * MVC = Most Valuable Customer (or a Loyal Customer)

Understanding these 8 Levels of Customer Value will enable you to target ­ and retarget ­ your prospects more effectively, and thereby increase your conversion­rate. As each customer moves through these levels, they become more valuable to you. So it’s certainly worth committing the following definitions to memory:

Prospect ­ landed on your page but not yet acted HOT Prospect ­ has made a micro­commitment ­ e.g., answered a

poll question, watched a video or shared some content. Lead ­ provided you with their contact details (typically, email address)

HOT Lead ­ opened your follow­up emails Buyer ­ purchased your Trip­Wire (a low­cost first­purchase) but not

yet purchased your Core Product(s) Customer ­ purchased your Core Product High­Value Customer (HVC) ­ purchased your Core Product and

additional products from you (Profit Maximisers) Most­Valuable Customer (MVC) ­ repeat purchaser, loyal customer.

Buys anything and everything you create These 8 Levels inform the steps that we put in place in our sales funnel. Each step in our funnel is designed to move your customers along the Value­scale. Which leads us to the core of our training…

The 7 Practical Steps of a High­Converting, Highly­Profitable Funnel

So now we arrive at the core of our funnel. What are the practical steps you need to implement to attract prospects, build comfort, seduce them and then commit them long­term? Let’s visit our funnel for the final time ­ now with the 7 Practical Steps inserted between the 8 Levels of Customer Value:

A: Attract:

1. Engage and Commit = HOT Prospect Your first task is to ensure prospects don’t “bounce” straight out

of your funnel. To avoid this you need to design and create a lead generation campaign that grabs your prospects’ attention and causes them to take the first small step into your funnel..by engaging with your content.

Whether it’s watching a video, clicking a share button, or

answering a Poll or survey question ­ if a prospect performs any positive action on your site, they take the first step into your funnel. An engaged prospect is a HOT prospect; they’re much more likely to take the next step...

And crucially, with BuzzRipple, you can distinguish between Prospects and Hot Prospects in your retargeting ad campaigns.

2. Get their email address = Lead

Once you have their attention the next step is to get their email address so you can continue the conversation. This should be tied in with the first step ­ it could even be on the same page.

Typically you’ll receive an email in exchange for a free gift (a Lead Magnet). Make sure that your gift is of value and answers a specific pain point ­ if you offer something of value, your leads will be more likely to reciprocate. Your gift must also be related to your subsequent revenue­generating products to make the transition from lead to buyer as smooth as possible.

B: Build Comfort

3. Get “inside their head” = HOT Lead Now that you have their email address, you can re­target them

with an email follow­up sequence. The ultimate aim of this sequence is to take them to your first

paid offer and convert them to a buyer.

4. Offer a Trip­Wire = Buyer A Trip Wire is a low­cost, high converting offer designed to

make it as easy as possible for your lead to make the psychological transformation to a buyer. Therefore, it should be an ‘essential’ product within your niche sold at a very competitive price so that prospects can instantly recognise that it’s good value.

Your Trip Wire is NOT supposed to be you main revenue­generator. Indeed, a lot of very successful businesses sell their Trip Wires at cost price, or even at a loss. They do this because they know that this loss is more than compensated for by the boost to conversions of their Core Products further down the funnel. If you do not offer a Trip Wire, you risk making Major Mistake #1 ­ trying to seduce before you have fully built­comfort.

NB: You can direct leads straight to your Trip Wire offer from your Lead Magnet, but we still advise you set up step 3 to maximise your conversions.

C: Seduce

5. Offer a Core Product = Customer We’ll not dwell too long on this step for now ­ because you

probably already have this product and offer in mind. This is where most people START their funnels. But as you know, sending cold traffic directly to a core offer is a recipe for low conversion­rates and poor ROI.

But that’s not an issue for you, because you have attracted your customers and built trust with your first successful paid transaction ­ your Trip Wire. Even if your Trip Wire costs just a few dollars, once your customer purchases it, the dynamic of your relationship fundamentally changes: now you’re dealing with a buyer.

6. Offer a Profit Maximiser = High­Value Customer

Some of the world’s most successful businesses do not make any profit from their Core Product! They rely on their “Profit Maximisers” instead.

So far our funnel has focussed on increasing the number of buyers ­ i.e., Magic Growth Variable #1. A Profit Maximiser is designed to increase the 2nd Magic Growth Variable ­ namely,

the average transaction value. Your Profit Maximiser should of course complement your Core

Product. We recommend you price your PM at about 60% of your Core Offer. This way you ‘anchor’ this offer to the higher price that they have already paid.

D: Build Long­Term Commitment

7. Let them into your “Inner Circle” = Most Valuable Customer There are various ways you can maintain contact with your

customers and encourage them to come back for more. We recommend that you use at least 2 of these channels: Your Facebook Page Retargeting ads Regular emails and Newsletters Your Blog Deals and Rewards Clubs

NB: there is also a “Step Zero” ­ namely: Identify and reach your target market. However, since this training concerns maximising your traffic once it’s IN your funnel ­ rather than driving traffic TO your funnel ­ we won’t discuss this stage in detail here.

***

So there you have it. If you implement these 7 Steps, you’ll have a funnel worth bragging about…a slick selling machine.