How Big Should My Sales Funnel Be

Every now and then I’ll get someone asking me how big should my sales funnel be? Well, as with anything in business (and in life) the perfect answer to that question is “it depends.”

In this article I’m good explain some of the pros and cons of having both a long and a short sales funnel and why I think that having a longer sales funnel not only leads to more money in your pocket, but happier customers. And yes, we are good to talk automation of your sales funnel.

Size determines importance

How big your sales funnel is depends on what your business goals are. Personally, because the ultimate goal of my business is to take care my customers, make sure that they feel comfortable, and build a solid relationship with them, my sales funnels tend to be long.

In the Internet marketing world it’s very rare for a funnel to be long. In fact more often than not as soon as you opt into someone’s email list or get a free gift in exchange for your information, you are bombarded with content that’s riddled with affiliate links or your hammered with offer after offer, after offer.

My theory is that size determines importance when it comes to sales funnels. The bigger your sales funnel the more important your customers are.

The problem with short sales funnels

Here’s the main problem when it comes to having a short funnel – there’s no character development. Just like in a good movie takes time to develop a relationship with a character. Some of the worst movies that have been made were bad simply because they didn’t take the time to help the audience see why it was important to become emotionally attached to a protagonist or antagonist.

It’s the exact same thing when dealing with sales funnels…

New customers, especially ones that stumbled on your website somehow, need time to understand who you are. They need to know what your story is, why they should listen to you, and most importantly why they should buy from you.

It is very, very hard to do that in a span of three emails all consisting of pitch after pitch.

There are benefits to short one’s

Don’t get me wrong although I think that short sales funnels aren’t all that great, there’s some things about them that do make it possible to profit significantly.

For example, some audiences simply don’t have the attention span to progress through a long funnel. This is especially true in the Internet marketing realm where people are looking to make money quickly. They want to opt into their free e-book, get sold a one-time offer, feel like they’ve accomplished something and then move on to the next product.

It’s a generalization of course, but for the most part shorter sales funnels work very well in the make money online niche. The longer the funnel with this niche the more likely it is that you will not make any sales.

How Big Should My Sales Funnel Be? The longer the better in my opinion

So how big should my sales funnel be?  It should be a long funnel that has a nice mix of storytelling, affiliate links (if that’s possible in your niche), and offers that coincide with where your customer needs are – is the ideal.

For example, in one of my client’s sites we have multiple ways of getting prospects into our sales funnel via e-books, and courses. Once they have opted in to our email list they are soft sold by being brought to a page where they can access free and premium items.

Over the next few days there given 100% free information that teaches them high-value business skills. It’s not until they have clicked on a specific number of links that they are given their first offer.

By waiting until they meet a certain criteria of clicks we are able to sell to them when they are most ready. They are active, we know what they are interested in, and we can then give them a premium, product that coincides with that activity and interest.

In doing this we are able to not only sell greater quantities of products but also more expensive products because of the built up relationship.

Conclusion

So to answer the question “how big should my sales funnel be?” The answer is it depends on your niche. However, more often than not a longer sales funnel that builds true and authentic relationships with your customers is by far preferable to one that simply tries to squeeze every last dollar out of your new prospect the second they enter it