The Funnel Tourney

Let’s talk about your sales and marketing funnel. That’s the process that most businesses use to manage getting from prospects that might buy from you to prospects that do buy from you. And today, I want you to try on a different analogy for size rather than just funnel, because sometimes that funnel idea can get in the way of success.

Let’s think about it as a tournament, an elimination tournament where your prospects are vying for the chance to win and work with you. The reason this is a useful way for you to think of it is sometimes we get caught up with trying to make the funnel as big as it can be, and we leave people in the funnel much longer than it’s valuable for them to be there, and they distract the business from focusing on those that will ultimately buy from you. So just to talk about this bracket idea. I’m not talking about you know, the negative side of this, of half of these prospects losing and having a negative experience.

Less is more
Think of it more as a way for you to, to have permission to be okay with them deciding not to work with you and that you actually are winning, if your funnel is dropping in size and decreasing, because let’s face it, at the end of the day, your funnel conversion rate, if you’re like most businesses, is in the single digits, you know, it might even be less than 1% of those possibles becoming customers. Whatever that number is, there’s a lot of cutting down that has to happen. By embracing that, by seeing that is actually a good thing and looking for ways to identify and have those people that aren’t gonna buy from you exit sooner, that allows you to focus even more resources on those that are more likely to ultimately be in the winner’s circle at the end of your process. So, thinking of your funnel as a tournament is a way to embrace disqualification and don’t be afraid of it, right? Don’t hang on too long, and you will actually have more resources to spend on, on the winners.

The value of scarcity
The second advantage of this kind of an outcome is that that mindset about your funnel and your prospects is now you saying, you know what? Not all of you are prospects that really are right for us as a business. So you’re turning the tables a little bit and you’re creating some value for your business because at the end of the day, you can only work with so many customers, and you wanna choose the right ones, and they are in a way, in a competition for getting the opportunity to work with your business. Now, of course, you wanna do that in a respectful and generous way for these prospects, but that attitude and that approach will come out and they will feel the inherent value that your business has for them, and that may actually increase your conversion of those prospects that do make sense for you to work with.