The Discomfort of the Sales Funnel

Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like funnels? I don’t mean like for refilling your oil or delicious funnel cakes. I mean, well, let’s let’s talk about this. So, as many of you know, there’s a concept called the sales funnel. It’s a process where you get someone into a process and kind of help them along the way to purchase your product. Now, you don’t see this that often with physical products. There’s a whole different way of dealing with that, but you do see it for services, especially certain kinds of services. And sure enough, if it’s a service that kind of gives you pause, it’s probably one that has a funnel associated with it. Funnels don’t feel good, no matter how well they’re built. And if you’re like me, you know right away when you’re in one. Are you in one now? Are you thinking that right now that by listening to my podcast, you’re in my funnel? Because if you’re listening to the podcast, doesn’t it mean that you’re starting to kind of buy into how uh I approach things, which means you might actually buy one of my books and then you might actually hire me to speak or to coach you. So, Mark, isn’t this a funnel? Well, not intentionally. I mean, there’s nothing making you move forward. Nothing in this podcast builds momentum. There is a bumper at the end right when you normally turn it off that says, “Hey, if you like this, you know, you can buy my books or do this or do that or whatever, but it’s not really a funnel. My books tell you a little bit about the other stuff that I do, but mostly they just say, “Hey, here’s the other stuff I do.” And uh if you want to rate this, that’d be great. I don’t go out of my way when it comes to coaching people to shove them into a funnel either to get them to pay, to get them to buy. I want them to make an informed decision. So, does that make me definitely not an expert on funnels? It definitely makes me someone who doesn’t construct them very well because I’m too focused on the product.

Funnels vs. Professional Processes

Attorneys don’t really need a sales funnel because they have sort of a a process in place. You go talk to \ the receptionist or their secretary and then make a plan to have a consult and then go from there. There are engagement letters and so forth. The same is true for real estate. If if you’re looking at a home, then typically the site you’ve looked at the home on is already tracking you, your IP address, everything. It’s very detailed and it’s kind of cool and it’ll keep reaching out to you and touching you and saying, “Hey, uh, you know, you looked at this 3 days ago, blah blah blah.” So, that’s a a funnel.

A Personal Encounter with a Pushy Funnel

Having said all of that, let me tell you about the experience I just had which is prompted me to do this for you. As you know, if you’re an avid listener that some of these recordings are 10 minutes long about things like this that we can learn together with and some of these recordings are about an hour long and there are people that I find super interesting that I hope you find as interesting. Sometimes I have to pursue someone for a while and it’s just because they’re very popular. They’re public figures. They’re busy. they have a certain kind of schedule or, you know, they may need a little bit more vetting of me to finally get back to me. But all in all, it it works pretty well. And again, as I said in the CEO mindset, people of the kind of mindset that I typically ask on the show where people will say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And then 2 days later, we’re doing it. In addition to having people on my show, I typically appear on other podcasts and shows. So, every so often I’m approached and I have a service uh that I use and every so often I get an email that says, “Hey, would you like to be on the show?” and and so on so forth. And different people have different processes. Some people are like me where they are the booker as well as the person conducting the interview. So, other some people have some buffers in between. Well, I recently agreed to one of these fact-finding 15-minute meetings only to find that the meeting was actually 30 minutes and only 15 minutes was spent on me and the rest of the time was trying to shove me into this person’s funnel in which this person sort of sold something that they believed I would benefit from. and it only cost $10,000. Now, for me, they would do $9,000. It was obvious to me from the moment the first question was asked, I knew that question had nothing to do with my appearance on the show and had everything to do with this funnel. Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? because I’m naively under the belief that you can actually have a customer interaction in which you sort of vet them while they’re vetting you and you’re not shoving them into a funnel. Because again, I think a funnel is something different than a process. A process is just saying, “Hey, you know, I kind of I kind of want to talk to you. You seem to be interested.” And you could argue and say, “Well, Mark, that is a funnel.” But a funnel by its physical shape kind of shows you how you get to the point where you’re falling. You’re you’re you’re you’re trapped. You’re you’re being plunged faster and faster until the end of it.

The Financial Pressure Cooker

And that’s how I felt for a number of minutes. At the very tip of this funnel, where I was swirling at nearly the speed of light, I was then told that I could pay for this using credit cards and that I should put the total on a credit card to give to them. And then I should put that total from that credit card onto another credit card and keep rolling it around. And that way I could, and I quote, avoid the interest. Oh, now correct me if I’m wrong, if you disagree with me, but if you’re telling someone how to pay for something and you’re coming up with very clever ways to do it, you’re not really focusing on the process or the solution. Now, of course, if you have a payment plan in place, if it’s something that you can do via subscription, if you have various products, and everyone does. Everyone from real estate to banking and so forth, typically have some sort of product or financial product. People who sell higher ticket items typically partner with merchant accounts. The very basic level is that you accept credit cards and then it gets better from there. you actually accept bank transfers and you actually accept different kinds of payment methods like Apple Pay and so on and so forth. Even in banking, there are products or different kinds of savings accounts.

But if you’re wrangling someone to sort of go into a gray area financially, you know, sometimes very not that often, I I sort of wish I did the video portion of this because you’d see the look on my face. It was just incredible.

Integrity Over Tactics

So, I think this is a really spicy lesson for for myself and and for other people. If you do have something like a service that is sold using what you call a funnel or your boss calls a funnel or your company calls a funnel, then I think it’s the most mindful thing to do to consider how your customer sees it. Does your customer see the funnel or is it invisible? I’m sure there are people who are sales experts who talk about that all the time where they say if you can’t see the selling then you’re doing it right. I don’t know how to make you a million dollars overnight. I do know how to show you how to have integrity and to have a good product. I can tell you that human beings want to be treated as human beings. And I can tell you that you, someone who’s listening to this podcast, is probably someone who knows all of that right now. It’s probably how you conduct yourselves. You are probably someone who really does operate with integrity that you will probably even pass up what some would consider to be an easy sale because you know in the long run it’s probably not a good fit for your client and might actually cause some hardship. So I want to say if you’re that kind of person and my bet is on the fact that you definitely are that kind of person and kudos to you. Kudos to you for having integrity and trying to just have the best product or service or both and not the best funnel and thanks for allowing me to share that with you. I appreciate you

Thought-Provoking Questions About Your Sales Funnel

Does your sales process feel like a helping hand or a trap door? Think about the customer journey. Is it a series of informed decisions they make willingly, or does it feel like they are being pushed faster and faster toward a transaction they might not be ready for?
Is your funnel “visible” to the customer? Can your potential client feel the mechanics of the sale happening to them? If they can sense that your questions are designed solely to qualify them for a sale rather than to understand their needs, the integrity of the interact...