Revenue is crucial for any business and it’s vital to have efficient structures in place to support this. A robust revenue funnel can be transformative for businesses, helping to drive sales and support business goals. It’s a steady, results-driven process that can take your enterprise to the next level when you know how – and you can use Salesforce CPQ to build it.

What is a revenue funnel?

It’s, essentially, the steps that every customer will go through with your business before buying something from you. Having a revenue funnel in place has a number of advantages for your business, including being able to get clear insights into the buying journey, understand where there might be obstacles and also how to optimise the buying process. Salesforce CPQ provides a lot of support at every stage if you’re looking to build a revenue funnel.

How to build a revenue funnel with Salesforce CPQ

• Identify all the various stages involved in your sales process. This is going to vary depending on your business. However, there are some common stages that most organisations go through, including lead generation, lead qualification, needs analysis, proposal and negotiation.
• Map out the sales process for your business. This will show you the steps that a customer needs to take to move from one part of the revenue funnel to another. Make sure that the sales process is aligned with the customer buying journey and that you have a clear idea of the metrics you’re going to use to measure the success of your sales process (e.g. average deal size). Use data to continuously review and improve your sales process so that it’s optimised for success.
• What are your lead sources? These are the sources of new leads for your business that will improve the chances of conversion. Most businesses will have a wide range of different lead sources that could include your website, referrals from happy customers, leads that come in through social media platforms, as well as email marketing.
• Create lead capture forms. This is a key part of the process of creating an effective revenue funnel in Salesforce CPQ. It’s essentially how you’re able to capture the data of those who could become future customers. Salesforce CPQ offers built in tools to help with this, including Web-to-Lead and Web-to-Case. Businesses that automate lead management see a 10% jump in revenue over six to nine months so it’s worth making the most of all that Salesforce CPQ has to offer.
• Score and nurture leads. It might be tricky to do this manually but in Salesforce CPQ it’s a simple way to identify those that are the most likely to convert. Lead nurturing is essentially building relationships with your customers and helping to steer them through the revenue funnel to the point of conversion.

Salesforce CPQ offers a wealth of opportunities to improve business outcomes by establishing robust processes, like an effective revenue funnel. From building positive relationships with customers to closing more sales, it’s a key tool that any business needs to have.