Practically every business out there operates on a “business funnel” system. What exactly does this term mean and how can you use to earn some money for your business? The concept of a business funnel is actually a fairly simple one that takes just a minute to wrap your brain around. One end of the funnel (the smaller end) is your front end sales and the other consists of back end sales (larger end).
Front end sales are the products and services you can quickly sell to your customers. This is where you make a fast return on your goods. Back end sales include the things that you sell to those clients later on, through return business, additional services or affiliate programs. Sure, it’s rewarding to make those fast front end sales, but it’s also a lot more work to get those sales made. With back end sales you will build more lucrative and long-lasting wealth that can maintain and grow your business over time with much less effort spent.
The business funnel concept is nothing new in the marketing world. Retailers use this all the time. For example, let’s look at the local grocery store. Every week, they send out ads selling items at low prices, some even offering buy one get one free deals to consumers.
The advertisements are what get customers like you in the door to take advantage of these front-end sales items. But what the grocery store knows is that you will more than likely walk out of the store with an additional $40 worth of grocery purchases because smart consumers get everything they need for their household in one trip to save on gas and time. While the front end items may have cost you around $20 or so and saved you a good deal of money, the additional purchases you made are how the store made its real profits. In other words, the small end of the funnel was the sales items, the bigger end of the funnel and profits were the large grocery purchase you just made.
Many business owners concentrate too much on the front end sales, but the smart business owner will offer front end items but concentrate more on the back end profits they can potentially make. Likewise, if you are a business owner and you have a website where you can advertise your products, specials and other information about your company, you can take advantage of the business funnel idea to increase profits and make more money for your company.
Recently, BusinessWeek offered a webcast about “Turning the Reverse Funnel Upside Down” (Ron Hubsher, BusinessWeekOnline.com) What the author and host of this webcast was trying to promote is the business funnel system; increasing wealth with back-end sales instead of spending so much time with front-end efforts. It’s not a new concept; the way it is executed with the power of the Internet is just new.
So how can you as a business owner with a website and a dream start building wealth using the business funnel model? Here are some ways you can do this and start making money with less effort:
The web-seminar. This is a new twist on an old idea. The Internet is full of information just waiting to be found. Offer your website viewers the opportunity to review a free web seminar offered remotely via their computer or a phone in session (called a tele-seminar).
While holding the seminar, the host can offer free information and advice, allow callers to comment and the whole thing gets recorded for later promotion. At the conclusion of the seminar, offer participants the opportunity to attend a low-cost class or provide a deal for one of the services or products your company offers. If they like the information you present, they will be hooked and will keep coming back to learn more.
Offer affiliate opportunities. That’s right, you can build up a nice back-end income by allowing others to share in and promote your products and services with a small monetary incentive as their reward. Affiliate programs are becoming wildly popular ways to make more back end sales with minimal efforts on your behalf. It’s basically a low cost alternative to advertising and offers endless networking opportunities. Just think for every website visitor you get, each person may know hundreds of other people who may be interested in what your company can do for them. It’s a new concept based on word-of-mouth advertising that offers great potential for anyone who taps into this.
Have an action plan. Just as any organization would include a plan for growth and sales, your business needs to come up with a plan to add back end products to the existing offerings. For example, if you offer products for home building, you may also want to offer financing or consulting as some additional services. You can affiliate yourself with other companies who will provide these services and then make an income from their efforts, just for referring customers their way.
Be accountable. Each person in your company should be responsible for the success of the growth and wealth building, even if it’s just you. That means following up on every possible lead that may introduce you to other sources of income. That means measuring everyone’s success to determine what’s working and eliminate things that aren’t. It is recommended that your business spend at least an hour everyday seeking out other residual forms of income to build your back-end of the funnel.
With just a few simple methods, your business can earn a substantial amount of income by building up back end sales. Using the business funnel system is a great way to increase the chances that you will be earning more money with less effort.
Jeremy Gislason
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/building-a-business-funnel-and-help-your-business-start-earning-more-money-695557.html