MBA2075 Q&A Wednesday: Why is my sales funnel not working?

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar a Show Business simplified every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over at Omar MBA Net. Today's question is from Grace and Grace asks why is my sales funnel not working? Hey Omar, I know this is a very broad question for Q and A Wednesday, but I'm really frustrated. Six months ago I signed up for a Funnels software, followed all their training, created my products and all the steps that are in the funnel but I have not made my first sale. I'm really frustrated because I've put in a lot of time and money into this process of creating my sales funnel and everybody makes it look so easy and yet I've yet to make a sale. I know I'm repeating myself but I would love for you to give me any insights you have on improving my sales funnel or if I should just tear it all down and give up. Appreciate any insights or even motivation you can offer. Grace Grace don't worry, we got your back. I totally understand where you're coming from. You invested a lot of time and money into building out your funnels, and it's really justified that you're feeling frustrated. But what we're going to do for you today is that we're going to break down funnels and get real a little bit. I'm going to explain what funnels can help you with and what it can't help you with and what you have to get right or you're just not going to be able to make a sale. By doing so, it might point you in the right direction and point those who are listening that are frustrated with their own sales or sales funnel. At the end of the day, there's actually just a few things you have to do properly in business to be successful. Everything else you can kind of get away from with not being perfect. I'll walk you through those things in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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So Grace signs up for a funnel software. She does all the training, all the exercises, builds out her funnel, puts all the products in place in the funnel. No sales. Six months later. I feel for you, Grace. I do. And that's why I picked up this question and wanted to do today's episode. I want to state some facts, and this might come off as a little bit of tough love, but somebody needs to say this. A software can't solve all your problems. Even a concept or an idea like a funnel also won't solve all your problems. It's not enough just to have good software and a good strategy for you to be successful at business. Otherwise everybody would just do it. They would just follow the steps. In fact, they would just get some computer program to do it for them, some AI, and just automate the whole thing. And whoever sold you this concept or idea knows this. They know that. The truth is that business really has a few fundamentals that you got to get right. And we're going to walk you through that today. But we're all also going to talk about what funnels can do for you, what they can't do for you, what's important, what's not and how people just fall into having these over complicated funnels that really actually hurt their business more than it helps them. So let's start with air. The idea of a funnel is like walking somebody by the hand that comes to your website and telling them what to do next. Step one, download my eBook. Step two, offer them, you know, a low cost offer. Step three, offer them a mid tier offer. Step four, show them your VIP program. And it's a bit of like a value ladder, right? And conceptually this sounds fine, right? This sounds like it makes total sense. But the reality is, is that you're pretending or you're assuming that everybody's coming to you on your website wanting that entry level product that you have in your funnel, whether it's free or paid. That ebook. Let's say I need to learn how to ballroom dance. Let's say, for example, I need to learn fast because I have a wedding anniversary that I'm going to have in two months and I want to surprise my wife, right? I'm willing to pay to learn the fundamentals or get a crash course in ballroom dancing, but I need to get that now, fast. If I go to your website and it says, here's a PDF of the best shoes for ballroom dancers, I don't really care about that right now. I need to learn now. Right? I need your flagship product. So most likely I will leave your website, I will never come back and I will continue my search on Google and probably find a course online or some sort of local academy that's going to help me with my needs. This is the thing that people will talk about about funnels. It doesn't serve everybody. Yes, it serves the person that is starting at the same starting point as your funnel, but not everybody, El, you're pretending like everybody that is actually a good fit for your flagship product. The product that you actually offer for a reasonable amount of money is going to start where your funnel starts. And what's happening here is that you're actually losing out a lot of customers that are ready to buy. People that don't need convincing that they need what you have. So I'm very much against the idea that, oh, all you need is a funnel. You don't need a website. No. If that's the case, why doesn't Apple Computers have a funnel? Right? They have a website because some people want to buy a phone, some people just want to get the AirPods, some people want to buy an $8,000 laptop. Let's talk about services. Why does Tony Robbins not have a funnel. The guy who is the ultimate trainer, right? You go to his website, he's going to tell you about his events, he's going to tell you about his programs that you can buy. You don't have to go through, through a restricted path that you don't know where it's gonna lead you to as a customer. This is not a good experience. Now, am I saying funnels should be thrown in the garbage? No, they have their purpose. Especially if you're doing any kind of, I would say lead generation, any kind of paid advertising where you really need people to take action quickly so you can grab their contact and then you can then offer your products and services. For example, if I'm running a Facebook ad, I don't want my ad to click through to my. There's just too many options there. I want the ad to advertise maybe a video course I'm doing for free or a webinar. I'm going to send them straight to a kind of mini funnel where all they do is opt in for that and then I take it from there with email and then educate them, nurture them, show them what I got. Now that we kind of addressed the funnel in the room, so to speak. Right? Let's talk about what you have to get. Right. Regardless if you use funnels or not. One, you need to understand your customer very well. You have to understand their pain points. You have to understand what they are struggling with. How are they addressing the struggle right now? Like, what's their workflow right now? Whatever it is. For example, if somebody was starting a basketball academy for adults, I love basketball. I would be a customer for them. They would need to understand what is my schedule like, right? When do I have free time? Is it Saturday? Is it Sunday? What time in the evenings? Do you work until 6 or 7? Are Thursdays better than Fridays? They need to know a little bit about me and my schedule and how I work and how I live to be able to offer me a solution that fits my needs, my lifestyle. So that's the first thing you have to really understand who you're serving. And that's why I always say you need to really understand your audience well. You have to understand the people you're about to serve with your business. Number two, when you know that, you know what they're struggling with, you know where they need help, you know what they're willing to pay for, and that's where your product comes in. This is where your product or service comes in. It has to be something they actually need. Ideally, it's something they're desperate for. Because when you have something like that that they will need and are looking for or hungry for, it's going to make your life a whole lot easier. You get this right, your business is going to be much easier. On. For example, I am running an event called oscon. It's here in Australia. It's for founders that run businesses in Australia. There's not a lot of conferences like this in Australia. In fact, I couldn't find any. So when I opened this up to our first group, the tickets sold out immediately because people are hungry for something like this. They've never seen something like this. They don't want to fly abroad to go to a conference or go to a retreat. This sounds like a lot of fun. In fact, it's a ski retreat type of thing. Like the setting is in a ski resort and half the people that are going don't know how to ski. That's how desperate people are to get together. And that's why it made it easy on me. So choose something that solves the pain point of your audience that they're just absolutely desperate for. Now, there's one more thing that you have to get right in your business or things are going to be really hard for you. This is not enough. Understanding your audience and having a great product is not enough. You got to have traffic. You got to have a way to get people to find out about you, to know who you are. To go to your website, you need as much traffic as possible. You need more at bats. This is a baseball metaphor, right? The more times you get at bat, the more chances you have to increase your batting average. You are tossing a paper ball in a garbage bin. You try 10 times, you have a higher likelihood of having more makes than if you tried it two times. So the more traffic you have, the more likelihood of success because you just have more chances to win business. So how are you going to get people to your website? How are you going to get people to know who you are? Where are they going to come from? What channels are they going to come from? Are you going to go all in on SEO and write great blog content and optimize your website so that when people search for your keywords, they find your website? Are you going to create a compelling YouTube channel that drives traffic to your website? Are you going to be like the king of Twitter or the queen of Instagram and invest your time in building your audience there to drive traffic to your website? What is it going to be. You have to choose. You have to find a way to bring people to your website. And you got to commit. You got to go at it every single day, month after month, for maybe more than six months, maybe a year to two years, and you're going to find yourself getting traction. Once you have a great product and you know your audience very well, all you need to do now is get that audience to your product. And that's where audience building comes in. That's where running live webinars comes in. This is where answering questions in your community comes in. This is where writing great content or appearing on other people's podcasts come in. You got to get people to your website. As you saw, everything I just mentioned is pretty much free. Okay? It just takes sweat equity. Now you have some cash. Of course, you could spend money on paid advertising to get people to your website. But without understanding your audience, understanding their pain points, building a compelling solution, and driving traffic to that solution, it's gonna be really hard for you to run any kind of business. It doesn't matter if it's online, offline, your mom and pop pizzeria, a product, a service, a software, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you have the most sophisticated funnel in the world. If you don't have those three elements, you're gonna have a hard time making sales.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. To wrap up today's lesson, Grace, I feel your pain. You put a lot of time and effort into your funnel. Things are not panning out, but it's not a big waste of time or money because you can still use it. Okay. You can still kind of leverage the work that you have done already. A good way to turn a funnel into a website is just add a header navigation and link to different pages. If that software is not working for you, you're not married to it, you can leave. It might take some work to transfer things out, but that's okay. It's going to be worth it if it's an investment in your business. If you want to stay with them also cool. Like I mentioned, analyze your business. Be critical. Do you have those three elements I mentioned? If so, how can you improve it? How can you increase it? And don't forget email me and let me know how these tips, how this advice has helped your business down the road. Okay, thanks so much for asking your question, Grace. If you have a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net so I can answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. That way you get the advice you need and as well as you allow the opportunity for others to learn from your experience as well. Guys and gals, make sure you hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app or on every podcast app, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Casts every single cast you can think of. Follow us so that you get our episodes automatically. And don't forget, leave us a rating and review. We love to hear what you think of the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I've tried pretty much every tool out there when it comes to funnels, websites, page builders, landing page gizmos, all those things, right? These are just tools to communicate and organize the experience for your audience. They're just tools, right? If I gave you a bunch of tools and some lumber, you still don't have anything but just tools and lumber. Okay? You don't have a dining cabinet, right? You don't have anything that you can make with all that stuff. The fundamentals of business don't change. You get the fundamentals right, you make your life a whole lot easier. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of Foreign.

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