The Sales Funnel and How it Relates to Marketing Strategy

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast, where every week your hosts, Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this! Manage your off-field operations from anywhere with the rigour, online or offline, whether it's scheduling and dispatching jobs, tracking employee hours, managing equipment rentals,

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And before I pull Matt in, if you've been listening to us, what is this episode 14 to talk about rigour, bottom line is if you run any type of all-field service company and you got people out in the field in trucks and they're doing work or delivering parts and supplies and you're still waiting for the company man to sign your invoice so that you can get paid eight months later, reach out to rigour, let them fix all that so you can get paid like in a couple of days.

Easiest way to explain what they're doing. Matt, it's been a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're here. Let's do some marketing talk today. We are going to do some marketing talk today. And today we're going to talk about the sales funnel and how it relates to marketing strategy.

So anybody that has been in sales for any length of time knows what the sales funnel is. The sales funnel is a tool that you use to track leads as they progress from prospect to actual close deals or customers. The sales funnel was introduced to me, my very first sales job back in Bell South and back then there was basically four stages.

We used a CRM called Siebel, which I think is still around. Siebel used to rule the CRM world and the sales force came out and the sales force just literally destroyed Siebel. I think Siebel is an Oracle product. But here at OGGN, we still use the same four stages of sales funnel. So stage one is awareness.

That's when you have a, they're not even a prospect yet. This is when you have a potential buyer just being made aware of who you are and what you do. The next stage in that funnel is interest. This is when that person starts to become a prospect and they have an interest in what you're doing.

Then the next stage is some type of decision where they decide to work with you or not. And then the last stage is close or action where you deliver the product and you collect the revenue. From a sales point of view, every opportunity that comes into OGGN's door is great according to these four different stages. Now let me tell you what that does to me as a sales manager is I can look at our sales

team and I can see where these deals are flowing. I can see where they get stuck. And based upon years and years of doing this, typically where they get stuck the most is in between interest and decision. So stage two and stage three. So the point that the prospect now has an interest in what you're doing, but before you actually

can give them a proposal is where deals get stuck. Now that sales funnel through from a sales point of view, but Matt, from a marketing point of view, it's still the same sales funnel, but marketing people look at it differently, don't they? Yeah, I think from a sales funnel standpoint, this is a really good framework. This is actually the framework that Google uses too, right?

So it aligns with all the data that they get on how people typically buy awareness, interest, decision action, ADA, or however you want to say it. And then really there's different things that happen, right? So like awareness would be articles or advertisement or maybe people find a podcast, right? Or webinars, paid search, that sort of thing and awareness. The interest is like taking them a little bit further down the funnel and how people

are buying. We talked about this like pre-call, but you know, web content, social media, newsletters, email, you're trying to push them through that, right? And then really that gets muddy and sometimes people take the funnel and kind of combine the middle, but really from interest to decision or desire, right? Like you could use a different V.

They want to see expertise. They want to see authoritativeness. They want to see trust. They want to see white beepers or e-books or brochures or, you know, really expert knowledge and testimonials, right? So they're interested in what you're offering, but now they're trying to figure out like,

okay, I want to know a little bit more about that. And then the action step is like, okay, I want to see case studies. I want to see testimonials. I want to see data, right? Like I want to know that now I'm making the right decision. And I don't know if we'll cover it in this call or not, but there's actually steps after

they become a customer, right? And we've briefly touched on this previously that you want to continue to nurture and develop advocacy once they're a client because one of the things that the data says, right? And we've talked about this a little bit, but man, referrals and growing accounts is where you should start on amplifying and growing your network. Because the data says 25% of the cost value time, whatever you energy resources, whatever

you're putting into it, of maintaining an existing customer versus acquiring a new customer. So everybody's always focused on like new customer, new customer, new customer, well, customer retention and churn, which that might be depending on a different role at a different company. And they might be zeroed in on this and those might be different roles, but there's usually like telltale signs and if the account's not growing, it's dying.

And if you sold the account, regardless of if you passed it off or not, your name is still on it, right? They bought from you. And so we're going to be talking about why are new customers, but I just want in the back of your mind to think about like you as a salesperson, they're buying the company, the product, but they're also buying you.

And that's important for you to remember and upholding like whatever you promise them is super, super important for your reputation and maintaining existing clients is when we start working with clients is really where we look to do. Like let's keep customer retention up, like there might be holes there in the product service or touch points and the most time that people leave is through apathy, right? They just feel like a number, right?

And so again, I just want to put that out there as we move into the sales piece. So yeah. And so from a sales point of view, when I look at the stage one, that awareness stage of the funnel, on the marketing side, you'll hear marking people call it the top of the funnel, top of the sales funnel. And that's one of the places where your marketing team can provide the most value quickly is

that awareness stage is making sure that people that might have the promise you can solve are just aware of who you are and what you do. And lately with digital marketing, that can be very target. You don't need to spend a ton of money, but it's one of those things that in the old days, the salespeople had to do, which was to go out and educate companies about what you did to see if they had an interest and would become a prospect.

Now your marketing team can do almost all of that without your help. They just need your input on what are your customers struggling with. Yeah. I mean, that's the market potential, right? Like figuring out the market potential and getting people oriented in, they're trying to solve a problem, right?

They're searching the internet or they're trying to solve a problem and you're trying to create a framework that you might be a solution, right? But there's probably like things that you can do to get their attention. There's direct response or sense of urgency, like emotions, creating content that people share. You're just trying to get awareness, right?

You're trying to get, that's where branding kind of falls into. But top of the funnel is, again, we start with a big wide funnel and then we get people to self-select in or self-select out. But it's casting that wide net and letting people at least know that you're an option for whatever it is they're trying to solve. Yeah.

And so a couple of things I want to go a little bit deeper here. If you're a salesperson, you may not know this. Most marketing people do know this. Whatever problem is that you solve, that you help companies solve, there's some common language around that. So if you open up Google and type in Oil and Gas Sales Experts, Oil and Gas Sales Experts,

you will see my original company Motelpoint come up organically on that first page. Think about that for a second. That means anybody in the world that is looking for Oil and Gas Sales Experts sees my company first. I am using, or my marketing team is using SEO to make sure that we're at the top of that sales funnel.

Your marketing team can do the same thing. However, your marketing team probably does not know the words or the phrases that your buyers use when they're searching for help with this problem. That's where they need your help. Then they can create the content so that you rank, you're not paying for this. This is organic.

So you rank organically, which is then causing more and more people to be aware of what you're doing without you having to open your mouth or say a word. So Mark, you're opening up a can of worms for me here that I got to be careful. I did it on purpose. We have, I think, 476 episodes of our Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, our best SEO podcast.

That's something that I'm certainly been recognized for globally as SEO. And really think about this, people, like salespeople out there. The most powerful tool ever created to date is the machine learning that Google has. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff with ChatGBT and all this right now. And I'm not saying that it's not powerful, but man, Google's been kind of real, real quiet about what they built.

And it is tapping into absolutely everything. And it is trying to organize information. And so we talked about content marketing, and we've talked about putting out expert knowledge, expertise, authority, and trust. Google can understand that and is trying to orient you as a company or individual in that area. And so if you know how to talk to Google or you get a representative like, well, me,

that can help you talk to Google, like you've just recruited the most powerful supercomputer machine, whatever you want to call it, to help you, right? And Google is connecting the dots between people that are searching for something and what they're looking for, right? And they're the broker in that. So there's search marketing, there's SEM, there's, you know, AdWords.

That's actually, I don't think everybody knows that. Google is one of the biggest advertising engines and makes billions of dollars a year through selling paid search, which is if someone's searching for something, you can spend money, you can skip the line and get there. Now there's more dynamics to what's going on there and who's search, skips the ads and what people are looking for.

But man, that is how Google makes all its money. So please know that, okay? Is it's super powerful connecting those dots. And I know we're going to kind of get into this later, but with COVID, your website, right, is your digital storefront, right? So you might have this fantastic office.

Well, your website is the first impression that people see and it's becoming, you know, exceedingly more digital world. And if you're as a salesperson, your website's not on par with like your corporate lobby, you should start making some noise about that because, you know, it also, it allows you to extend your reach. Like people have changed how they're doing business.

And we've even see that with virtual calls, right? And so we are in an exceedingly digital world and you need to get out there and be visible for when people are searching for your service. And again, we're talking about touch points we talked about in the last podcast, email automation. Well, if you continuously search, come up through the different micro moments in AIDA,

buying steps, and they continuously see blogs or content or different pages on your website, inorganic and paid ads and whatever it is, they're going to become more comfortable with you. And that's a form of branding and sales and touch points. And there's more authority associated with that because people buy familiarity, okay, people buy what they know, like and trust. And so if you keep showing up and maybe they've read your content at different steps,

you're that much closer to winning the sale versus somebody else. And so, yeah, I mean, SEO and ads and podcasting, like, you know, there's arguments for it to be throughout the entire funnel, right, at each step. But certainly, when people don't have a referral, right, people don't have a referral, the first place they go is Google or other search engines to start searching for it. And you want to come up first, because you want to get more people into the top of the funnel.

And again, the website and marketing can help support you when you start interacting with the client from a sales standpoint. So, yep. And audience, if you search for what your company does, what problem that you solve in Google, and your company's website does not come up on that first page, reach out to Matt, it doesn't cost a lot of money for him to come in and tell you what you're doing

wrong. In 2023, if you don't have just the basics of ranking for stuff online, you're already behind, you're losing money. So, if you don't come up with that page, reach out to Matt, just bottom line. I just want to say this, here's the data. If you don't show up on the first page of Google, you are not relevant, okay? You have to show up in the first 10 callbacks on Google.

And here's the difference, if there is a thousand people and look, Google's constantly changing stuff and the data is a little bit different. But man, if you look at most studies, okay, the first position on Google gets roughly, 33% roughly of all clicks, okay? If you talk about the top three positions in Google, we're at 61% of all traffic for that keyword term is in the top three positions on Google.

Now, if you're in position 10, you're getting like 2% to 3% of all the people searching for that, right? And then now you got to say, okay, well, these people search for it, and then maybe they became prospects and then you may be close. So, it's not like what comes with a deal, but there's a thousand people, right? Or let's even go to a small number, like very specialized, there's 100 people searching for it. That means three, if you're on the bottom of the first page, three people are just coming

to your website. That doesn't mean they're even setting up a discovery call for a consultation, it's just saying that they came to your website and 97% of people will even never come back. Well, if you're in the top three positions, right, that 61% or top position 33%, so out of that 100 people, 33% of people are clicking that top search, right, roughly. And so, you have to be on the first page, but more than that, you have to be at the top of the first page to even be considered at the top of this funnel. And if you're not that for your core service, you're missing out,

like I don't know how much money you're losing, okay, but you're losing a potential ton of money because you're not even an option, right? And so, yeah, we have consulting sessions, we have audits, we have workshops, we do turnkey work, like I have other agencies, I just did a call yesterday, another agency problem solution for what they had for a customer, like we are experts in this. And if you don't have somebody in house, which you may may not, but also everybody Google's constantly changing stuff, you want to get a second opinion, you want to be working with

someone that's an expert. And, you know, there's a lot of great experts out there, like, I would encourage you if you're not ranking, go find somebody you're comfortable with that you know, like and trust and start to do business with them because it is exceedingly important in today's world, yeah. Bottom line. All right, so the next stage of the sales funnel for us is interest. Now, marketing people typically call us the middle of the sales funnel. And this is when, you know, people are getting to know your product or service better, trying to figure out what you

charge, maybe doing more research, maybe looking at your competitors. But that interest part is a place where marketing also can play a huge role in that if you sell the same 10 things to the oil and gas industry, and you've been doing it for five or six years, you know there's the same 23 questions you get asked about these 10 things. Each one of those questions that you get asked can be content that your marketing team can put together for you so you don't have to answer those questions and it allows your prospects because by now in the sales funnel,

their prospects, they have an interest, it allows them to self educate at their own rate. So this is a place where marketing really, really shines is in the middle of that sales funnel to help get the right information to the right prospects and in the method that they want to consume it so that you're not tied up on phone calls or video chats all day. Yeah, no, I think that, well, I actually think that this is a good way to differentiate like, I would actually say like, this is where it's a lead or a suspect. And then, you know, the next phase we talk about is like

the qualification of the prospect, but like they're still trying to figure out if you may be an option. So this is where you want to highlight your benefits. I've seen ad copy, right? And we really haven't touched a lot on ad copy. But I've seen ad copy where you don't even highlight the benefits, right? Like you're highlighting features, or you're just saying, hey, do you have a need, we service that need? Even in billboards, I see some really bad billboards around you, to be honest, where you're not connecting the benefits. Also, like if you're going to run a

billboard, right? And there's probably a lot of companies out there that are running billboards and stuff like that and TV ads. Why don't you test stuff out with AdWords and get some real data before you push it live, where you can't take it back, or you push it out in a magazine, and you can't take it back. You're like, well, we've just blew our marketing budget. Hopefully it'll work. Like why don't you get some data on that? But show the benefits of the brand. This is a great place for how tos. And Google loves how tos, right? It's trying to organize

like all information in the world. This is where like free tools and little ebooks and again, you're trying to get to that magic seven hours. So you want them to take content away. This is like when they're like not ready to set up the free consultation yet. They just want more information. It was really popular back in the day to run people to like a 1-800 number where they didn't have to talk to a salesperson. They didn't have to feel sold, but they wanted more information before the internet, right? Well, your website is that, right? Maintain the consistency of your

communication through the whole thing. You're trying to build trust in this area, but you want to show the benefits and you want to, this is where the downloadables come in. This is where like people want to find out more, but they're not quite ready to have a call yet, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just a place where deals live or die is right here in the middle of that sales funnel, right? If they live, they go to the next stage, which I call decision, but marketing people tend to call bottom of the sales funnel. And that's when the actual purchase is made. Now,

in oil and gas, the bottom of the sales funnel really needs to have the sales person or sales team highly involved, because it gets very complex on things like payment terms, milestone billing, all the stuff you really can't automate that is also individual per customer. However, one of the cool things that marketing help you with with the bottom of the sales funnel is once you close the deal, have marketing go back and survey your newest customer on why they bought from you. And the reason I want marketing to do this instead of sales is if you're a good

sales person, you're personal. And by the time you've worked this deal and it's closed, somebody's issued a PO, your customer now, who was your prospect, probably likes you. And because they like you from a psychological point of view, they're not going to tell you 100% the truth, not on purpose. It's just a flaw in our psychology where when we like somebody, we tend to sugar coat stuff a little bit. And at this point, the data is so valuable that you don't want to sugar so you want marketing to go into a quick five question survey on why the prospect became a

customer. And if you do that with every new deal you're closed, you can see a trend. And I'm telling you right now, a lot of times the reason you think you brought in a new customer is not why they came in. Most sales people think it has to do with price. And I'm telling you, probably maybe only 15 or 20% of the time at the most is at price. The other 85% of the time, it's something else, such as your ability to deliver the options that you showcase them, your after hour support, it's something like that. And the reason that's important to you as a sales person

is when you go after your next new prospect, you are now armed with data on why most people buy from you and you can craft your sales messaging approach to mimic that data. The other thing is, if you do this for a long period of time with new customers, over say a 10 year period, you'll see changes in that data because the oligas industry market changes. And when the market changes, the reason people buy from you change. So the bottom of sales funnel, bring your market, which is going to be mostly your sales team closing that deal, taking care of the financial

commitments, contract, legalese, bring your marketing team back in to survey this new client while the memories and knowledge is still fresh ahead on why they bought from you, super, super valuable. So again, right, like from a marketing perspective, and certainly when you talk to a lot of people about the quote unquote sales funnel, you know, there's four steps, but a lot of times people, there's a lot of overlap, and they group these together, right? And so from a marketing standpoint, how does a marketing help a salesperson? And again, there is a lot of that bleed

from like the prospect to closing the deal and becoming a customer and getting them to ultimately right to take action. You know, I would say right in this stage, right, like where they're a prospect, how does marketing help support you in that decision making process? What they're trying to do is get you over the line, right? And I've been a salesperson for a long time, like, you know, consultative selling, you know, these different kinds of things and enthusiasm, right? Have you ever heard like enthusiasm that you're trying to transfer enthusiasm, you're trying to electrify

and get that prospect excited enough to get them over the line because you're a potential option, and they're the right person. So what are some of the things you want to hit them with? Man, third party testimonials and reviews are so powerful. Certainly video is more powerful than, well, images. Images are more powerful than words, right? So because there's a lot communicated in a video, and also people understand by videos, people understand by pictures versus text, but man, anything's better than that. This is kind of rock, well, not really rock, paper, scissors, but

more of a hierarchical structure. If you can get video testimonials, depending on who it's from, super, super powerful. Certainly, you know, I've seen testimonials where like, you don't share the last name, you don't share the company, well, they can't qualify where that review is coming from. So the stronger the customer is, the stronger the title is, the stronger in what they're saying and what they're communicating, super, super powerful. So testimonials and reviews really transferring that enthusiasm, getting them over the line. I think that the prospects are now

open to buying. So you're talking about like, what are the options? This is where case studies come in, showing you what you've done for others, really connecting now those benefits for them. Like, this is what it's going to do for you, making that personal connection with people. Again, we talked about the no like and trust, right? And then I don't know more, Mark, what you're going to say as far as bottom of the funnel. But really, that's them taking that action, getting them to buy, making it easy for them to buy the season teas that you talked about,

creating assurance, okay, buyers are more, oh my gosh, right, free trials, demos. That's when you want to get that information. Like you said, that's also a great time if they're buying to tap referrals, right? Like, I think anytime people are making a decision, you want them to feel good about that decision, you want to get them through the line, it's the sales person's job to get that signature. And then marketing's there, just making sure you have everything you need, all the tools to support you in that action step of converting them to a customer.

Yep. And I'll go back to one of our previous episodes and also what Matt just said. When you close that deal, when you have that final handshake and everybody's happy, that's the time to ask for referrals. But you only ask for that referral because during the sales process, you let them know ahead of time that if you close this deal, you're asked for referral. Don't spring it on them, don't embarrass them, let them know in the beginning of the sales process, we did a whole episode of this, that if you meet their needs and they decided to do business with you, you will be asking for

referral. So it's not unexpected, but this is the best time to do it. You just got to earn it, right? Like, don't ask for anything you didn't earn. You can also ask for even review. So we ask for reviews throughout the sales process. Hey, did you get value out of this conversation? Like, hey, I provided you some value or free consultation or I explained this to you. Hey, could you leave me a review? Like, if you earn it, it's not just money, right? Like, there's social equity. There's other things out there besides that there's, you can compliment somebody. Like,

there's a lot out there. So yeah, like, that's a good kind of asterisk. Don't ever ask for anything from anybody. If you don't feel like you have the social capital to get it, right? Like, if you didn't earn it, don't ask for it, right? Yeah, that whole always be closing, throw it out the window and never revisit that again. That's so old school. It doesn't work and all it does is aggravate people. All right. So this is the point of the show where we do product reviews. If you have a product you'd like Matt and I to review, just let us know. Think of gadgety stuff. Think of stuff that

people that travel, people that are in sales or marketing might use. We've had some people write in and want us to review some crazy stuff like fire extinguishers or pavers and like we just, we can't review heavy steel stuff. So if you can't drop it in a box and ship it in the mail, it may not be what we're looking for. However, I would be interested in going out there, Mark, and if there's a place to go out there and test out some heavy machinery or something might be fun. I don't know. Okay. Okay. That's fair. So if you want us to do something that's heavy,

steel and review it, let us know. We'll travel to you. It would be hilarious. Matt and I review a backhoe or something. I'll do it too. It would be an honest review for sure. Speaking of stuff like honest reviews, you want to connect with Matt and I social, all of our social links are in the show notes. Our insider group, we're still working on that. Hope to have the details out to you by hopefully the end of the summer. And then linked at fail or tip of the week. I have a fail that a lot of people do and in today's world, just quit doing

this. If you send somebody a connection request on LinkedIn, personalize the message, don't just click connect. To me, that shows me that one thing is you're lazy. Number two, it makes me suspect if you have the right intention and it doesn't have to be a paragraph. It can be something as simple. I get this a lot actually is, Hey Mark, I'm a listener to the podcast. Love what you're doing. That's great. That shows me that you're a real person. You know that we do podcasting and I'm going to accept that connection request. So LinkedIn fail, just personalize the invite.

Don't just use the generic invite. It shows lack of effort and makes me suspect that you're not a real person. Permission marketing and personalization are big kind of themes in the marketing world. So absolutely do it. Like we don't like spammers. Nobody likes spammers. Like don't be a spammer. I will tell you something funny. I get a lot of spam on LinkedIn and what I try to do is start when I have times, I try to start a conversation with them and my ultimate goal is to convince them that I think people are listening to our conversation and so I want them to use code words

and so instead of saying money, I'll do something like Twinkies and instead of saying bank, it'll be something like Ford F-150 Raptors and what I'm trying to do is convince them to have this totally nonsensical conversation. I haven't got there yet. I've gotten close and if I ever do get there, promise you audience, I will let you know in this show how I scam the scammers. Well, no, no, Mark. I got to tell you this. So when I was doing like when cold calling and I do believe cold calling still works, but man, you're interrupting people and I believe that there's a

lot better ways to reach somebody. Again, that permission marketing like asking them to like, okay, can I talk to you? But definitely I was doing 60 to 80 calls a day for a number of years and we would just crush the phone. So we were in a big call center. You know what I mean? Like call like a bullpen, right? And because that was just not great work, we would entertain ourselves and we would use code words to say, can you use this in a sentence with a prospect? It was like improv and we would have words on a board and we would try to use that word in the call to

entertain ourselves. And if we could get like, these words are all the words like we had a scoring and it was actually something that was quite entertaining. You know, it's like, I'm going to take you like, you know, like a unicorn, like to the moon, you know, or something like that. And like people are like, what? But if you could get it in there, it was something that was really fun with code words. And I think you're kind of talking in that vein with what you're talking about. But it was quite fun when we were doing it. So yeah, so either just lost half our audience

or we're gonna gain 50% more because this is real behind this is real behind the scene stuff. All right, so let's get out of here. Remember, folks, make a difference and not a sale. Check us out next week for another enriching and cheeky episode of oil and gas sales and marketing podcast, a production of the oil and gas global network. Learn more at oggn.com.