The sales funnel is a marketing process where you take prospects through a number of steps to get them familiar with you and your products so they feel comfortable enough to purchase from you. The funnel is a metaphor that's used to convey the various stages of the selling process. Sales funnels can be used with any type of business, but in this report we'll be focusing on how to best implement them with intenet marketing.

A sales funnel is a model that's used to organize the whole process of selling, starting with lead generation to sales. The main advantage of using this model is that it forces you to focus on qualifying your prospects - identifying who is most likely to actually buy from you. That way, you're not just blindly advertising and trying to sell to people. Instead, you're targeting your ideal customer, and not wasting undue resources (time, money) on trying to sell to people who aren't really interested.

Picture a typical funnel that's wider at the top and gradually narrows. You start off by having a (hopefully) large number of prospects enter the top part of the funnel, and as the funnel narrows, there will be fewer people, but they'll be increasing likely to buy your product. The
following are the usual stages of a sales funnel. We'll be discussing all of these in more detail later on.

“" Traffic and Lead Generation
“" Communicating with your list
“" Making sales and Following up

You can find various definitions of a sales funnel, and different recommendations on the best way to set them up. You should keep in mind, however, that while the sales funnel is a very useful model, it's still only a metaphor. It can help you run your business more efficiently and suggest certain strategies you can use. It's not, however, an exact science. Nor is it a magic button that will instantly start pumping cash into your bank account or Paypal account. How well a sales funnel works is ultimately going to depend on you - the quality of your product, how you communicate with your prospects and so forth.

No matter how ingeniously you set up your sales funnel, some people will still not buy anything from you. You can‘t always Know why. Likewise, others may purchase something early in the process, before they've progressed all the way through the tunnel. But overall, the
sales funnel can help improve your conversions, land attract more long term customers, which is why they‘re used by so many top marketers.