Is Your Funnel Full?

What is your funnel? Imagine this, you are getting your oil changed and you watch the oil go in to the funnel. It circles around and then falls out the bottom. That is exactly the way your funnel for your business should work. As you acquire prospects, people you would like to be in business with, you place them in your imaginary funnel. The idea is to keep them moving through this funnel until they come out and end up as a customer, consultant or business partner with you. This is a great tool for focusing on keeping your business moving forward and keeping in contact with those prospects. Be careful not to let your prospects stay in this funnel to long, or they will move onto someone else, or another business and you will lose them! Here are some great tips on managing your prospects:

1. Reach out to at least 3-5 new prospects per day and place them in your funnel.
2. Determine what kind of prospects they are and organize them. Are they business partner prospects, customers or leads to help you gain more prospects? This is an important distinction because when you reach out to them you know what kind of conversation to have. (There are multiple CRM's (Customer Relationship Management) tools out there to make this step easier).
3. LISTENING to your prospects is key to make step 2. effective. If you don't know enough about them, you aren't going to be able to add value to them and their needs. This will cause them to go somewhere else. You also aren't going to know where in the funnel they go and where to put them at the other end :-)
4. Treat your prospects as though they are your customers. Nurture them and keep the value of being in business with you a priority.
5. Be available! The worst thing is to put time and effort into a prospect and then not being there when they need you. This will also cause them to go elsewhere for the information!

Check out this article to see the Top 10 CRM's:
https://zapier.com/blog/best-crms-for-small-business/