Perhaps you are already familiar with the MSP sales “funnel”. What if you could stretch that funnel to create more qualified leads and close them faster than before? Today’s post explains how to stretch your current MSP sales funnel model in order to accommodate a better revenue generating a model for your MSP business. 

What is a sales funnel?
The sales funnel is a model frequently used by marketers and salespersons to describe the purchase cycle. The basic concept can be broken down into three parts:
ToFu: Top of the funnel or ToFu is the stage when you “attract” prospects to your product or service. You do this primarily through content marketing and advertising.
MoFu: The middle of the funnel (MoFu) is a selective club. Not all who made it to the top can find their way down here. At this stage, you have to identify the ones who are really interested in what you have to offer. You can do this by tracking prospect activity. For instance, say, they visit your website, open your email or read your blog. Through a real-time 360-degree tracking of the prospect, you will know what interests your prospect.
BoFu: The bottom of the sales funnel is where your sales team takes over from marketing. This is more like an exclusive club, by invitation only. You are now well acquainted with the activities of the lead, specific interest and know exactly what and how to pitch to the lead. Another important challenge in this stage is to focus only on high quality leads to sales, so that your and energy isn’t wasted pitching to the wrong person.

Stretching the MSP sales funnel (And bettering your lead quality and quantity) through lead nurturing

A relatively newer approach to the sales funnel is stretching the BoFu. Stretching the BoFu is remodeling the traditional funnel as we know it. Instead of a highly streamlined, narrowed down bottom portion of the funnel, you stretch it to let more leads out of it. This means that we are aiming at higher conversion rates by keeping a more constant and higher flow of leads. Lead nurturing is a great way to do this. Nurtured leads are 80% more likely to close than non-nurtured ones. It also helps build trust by educating your prospects. This will help convince prospects that you are genuinely concerned about meeting their specific needs and interests. A good nurturing program carefully guides your leads through the buying cycle, thus reducing the number of lost leads.

By keeping up with old follow-ups aided by a MSP sales drip campaign, you can nudge the prospects that are stuck between the middle and bottom of the funnel. Smart sales prospecting coupled with the sales drip campaign is a powerful mechanism to help you stretch the MSP sales funnel. Lead nurturing programs provide you with the opportunity to tap into leads that may otherwise be stuck at the top or middle of the funnel. This will help to eliminate the loss of leads that don’t get the attention they need to convert.