If you’re a service-based business owner, there are likely two things you are not asking for, costing you marketing visibility and financial stability.
What are the two things? Asking For The Sale and Asking For The Referral.
I’ve got a system for you, a template that you can use that you can download right away and put this into practice in your business. And it will make you much more stabilized and visible moving forward, whether you’re a business owner or a nonprofit leader.
I shared last time that about 60% of Fort Collins business owners and nonprofit leaders wanted help with marketing visibility, sales, and funding stability. And about 25% of you said that you needed better systems in order to do that.
So, let’s build your marketing funnel system together.
Using AI (and When Not To)
I like to use AI for certain things, but deeply personal knowledge work is not one of them.
Developing your unique selling proposition is, hopefully, deeply personal knowledge work.
The nitpicky-type nonsense that you’ve got some expertise in, where there’s minimal value for your time, and not something you’d want or need to hand off to somebody else — those are things that you could probably put AI onto. Updating a stats spreadsheet. Copy-paste-style tasks. Categorizing your expenses. Finding open spaces on your calendar. That kind of thing.
Those are spaces where you know enough about the thing AI should be delivering, the spaces where you’d recognize what’s wrong so that you can course correct, because AI tends to deliver some crazy stuff sometimes. That’s a place to use AI.
When we’re talking about your sales or donor process and your funnel development, you do not want to take the humanity out of that.
While you could throw the system I’m giving you into Claude or ChatGPT, I’m going to encourage you very strongly to not do that. In the video and in text below, I walk you through the funnel template. The goal is that you can use the template on your own and figure out how to develop new funnels for your business or nonprofit. It is not hard, but you’re going to have to think about some things as we go.
The Marketing Funnel Template
The marketing funnel template is included as a download link for those of you who are subscribed to my newsletter as a PDF. If you’re not subscribed, what the hell are you doing? Just use this form below and you’ll have it in your inbox in moments:
Before You Start: Understand Your Client
The first thing you need to think about is your understanding of your client’s needs, wants, and wishes with regard to your specific services, the things that you do, your industry, the problem that you’re solving for them.
Think through each of these questions:
- What is the problem that you’re solving for your client or your leads?
- How do your clients and leads talk about that particular problem? What’s the specific phrasing? What’s the wording that they use?
- What do your clients know about your industry? And how do they feel about it? Those might be two different things. For instance, I love my lawyer. I don’t really enjoy thinking about all of the things that the lawyer is protecting me from. My lawyer, by the way, is Brian Hanning – That Damn Lawyer. You want a good lawyer on your side if you’re doing anything in the world of business.
- What is important to your clients rationally? This is not the emotional side of the brain. This is the logical side of the brain – what do they “know” they need in regards to this issue?
- What does the emotional side of their brain feel is important to them about this particular problem? Is there a range of emotions from unsolved to solved? What’s possible if something changes?
- What are the rational and emotional costs of not solving the problem that they are facing?
- When you have solved the problem for them, or when they have solved the problem with your help, what are they going to feel? What’s possible for them as a result?
- What are some ways that you can describe your offer in a way that highlights the positive future state for your customer?
Understanding your client’s rational and emotional needs and their understanding of your work is the first step toward serving them through your business.
Step 1: Build Awareness — Borrow Eyeballs
The first step: you’re going to borrow eyeballs from somewhere, from somebody, to do something.
What are you doing in order to get eyeballs to the thing that you are offering?
- Are you speaking at an event?
- Are you teaching a class or a workshop?
- Are you networking?
- Are you guesting on a podcast or a newsletter or a blog?
- Are you going and talking to people one-on-one?
- Are you doing a social media post series?
It helps to know that your customers and leads are already hanging out in whatever environment you’re targeting for marketing.
For instance, if I wanted to go and talk about developing a sales funnel to fellow entrepreneurs, I’d go to places like 1 Million Cups, a co-working space, a trade show where I could put on a little workshop or a five-minute presentation, or Founded in FoCo.
In fact, that was the entire reason that Founded in FoCo was created, so that we could share knowledge with each other. It works best if you’re NOT sales-pitchy while doing this (don’t be afraid to ask for the sale, but also don’t make the entire presentation one long commercial).
Step 2: Establish Conversion — Steal the Eyeballs (Ethically)
The next thing you need to do is think about how you convert. How do you steal the eyeballs for yourself? To be clear: it’s not destructive stealing. It’s more like lighting a candle with another candle. You want your target audience’s attention, and you want to be offering something of value, not just sales pitch.
A quick aside: I’ve referred to your potential customers as eyeballs — don’t get offended by this; the desired action here is shared attention and providing value.
In order to gain access to a target market, you can start with organizations or people who already have access to that target market. If you don’t, you have to build the trust from scratch. And that is a much longer, much harder pathway and exponentially more expensive.
When we talk about stealing eyeballs, what we’re really talking about is you are leveraging someone else’s built up trust to build your own trust in that space.
There is nothing exploitative about any of this (because exploitative tactics simply will not work).
You have to be in the authentic mode of showing up, delivering value, delivering service, delivering what you promise, and also creating relationships, because nobody wants to buy from infomercial guy. They want to buy from somebody who they know and trust and love.
Ask yourself:
- What is the action that you want these folks to take?
- How does somebody take that step? Where do they go?
- Do they get some sort of treat for taking this step with you? A download, a coffee, some free time with you?
- How do you describe the ask that you’re making of them during your awareness tactic?
So if you’re teaching a class, some examples you can use at the end of class: “Scan this QR code and download this PDF,” or “Scan this QR code and schedule some time with me,” or “Follow up with me afterwards for a Q&A, and we’ll see if we’re a good conversational fit.”
None of these things are demanding money. They’re offering value and a way to check in.
Step 3: Grow Consideration — Build Your Own Trust
Think about how you keep those folks who have given you and gifted you their attention. How do you build trust with them for yourself, and not borrowing it from a different organization this time around?
That might look like:
- Having a blog or a podcast
- Teaching additional classes
- Following up with personal check-ins, emails, or phone calls
- Having additional related content that follows up on some of the stuff
For example: Offer part two to the webinar or class that you taught. If you have a class and you didn’t have enough time, maybe you only had a 45-minute window plus some Q&A – the trust builder might look like: “I have the full version of this on my website. Just sign up. It’s free. I want you to go and find it.”
The goal is to build consideration and keep that trust growing over time.
Step 4: The Ask
Here is the part that most entrepreneurs, and especially solopreneurs, have a problem with: if you do not ask for the sale, you will not get it.
And I don’t mean that in an “Always Be Closing,” Glengarry Glen Ross type nonsense.
Here’s what I mean: you have a very particular set of skills. (Man, that is a different and much darker movie reference.)
You want to connect with them and solve their problem. If you don’t connect and they don’t think that you have a very particular set of skills that can help solve their problem, then you’ve missed something or misunderstood your audience in the earlier steps. Go back over those and try again.
When it comes to the ask, you can:
- Schedule coffee with them
- Give them some free Q+A time
- Send a thank you note and follow up
- Send a calendar invite to schedule a deeper conversation
- Schedule a 30-minute call
Conversation is where this is going. You’ve given them free resources. Maybe they’re ready to connect with you to have you solve the problem. You want to get them to commit, and you want them to schedule a conversation with you. Once they have that conversation with you, you move to your ask plan.
Your ask plan: What’s your primary ask to get them to commit?
“I think I can solve your problem. Can you commit to a four-week session with me to go piece by piece through your sales process?”
“I’ve heard you say that you have this audience you’re trying to reach. What would it mean to you to connect with this audience? I think I can help you with that. Would it be helpful if I could design the poster and the social media content and the blog posts?”
Also think about friction and how you will respond. “I don’t know about the budget. I have other stakeholders.” Cool.
“Can I schedule a meeting with your team to talk through this project and scope it out? Can I meet with your board so we can connect and talk about their reservations and what might be possible in this space if we solve this problem so that you’re not stuck?”
Understand what the block is.
Understand what they’re wanting to do.
Describe for them the future state.
“You mentioned to me that you feel really stuck, that this project has been dragging on a lot longer than you were hoping for. Can I help you with that? What if I designed these things for you? Here’s what we can do in the next three weeks.”
Step 5: Scope and Agreement
You’ve got the ask. You’re starting a conversation about the scoping process.
What’s next? “Can we get on the calendar for a scope? Here’s what I can offer for this particular service. Here’s what I have heard you describe the problem as. Here’s what you say it will do for you if it is solved. And here’s what I can do for you.”
You are always the person working to help them. You know you have something valuable to offer. Don’t let them languish in being stuck without the advent of your skills – but also help them understand what it is they’re signing up for, how you work, and what exactly you’re offering, plus how much it will cost them in terms of time, money, and energy.
Step 6: Refine Your Tools
Think about how your tools work for you as you’re developing this process:
- Do you have a calendar link for scheduling?
- Do you do client tracking or scoping of deadlines in some sort of CRM?
- Do you have a tool for collecting and contracting and collecting payments?
- Do you have payment methods that are more accessible than others? Are you allowing folks to pay via card, or are you check-only?
- What type of follow-up steps are required?
- How do you document your work for this particular customer?
Step 7: Retention and Referral
Once you’ve got the sale and you’ve started doing the work, think about your retention and referral processes. Once you are working with them, you might discover they have additional needs you can help fulfill. Maybe you ask:
- Do you have another project I can work on?
- Can I help you with this other thing that’s been sitting on your to-do list?
- What other things are stuck right now? How can I assist you moving forward?
- Can I bundle this into the existing work that we’re already doing?
The clients you already have are much more likely to continue paying you for additional projects in the future. You just have to know how to communicate with them and actually care about solving their problems.
And ask for their referral. The existing client base knows you, likes you, and trusts you enough to pay you. They have people in their orbit who are working on really cool and interesting things that you don’t have access to unless you ask: “Who in your orbit is working on cool, interesting, fun things that you think I might be able to help also?”
If you don’t ask, you’re not going to get the referral. It is nothing for somebody to say to somebody else: “So-and-so did a really good job, and I really hope that you connect with them so they can help you too.” It doesn’t take much. You are asking them to connect you to somebody else so that they can be of value to someone else – it’s a gift for them to be able to refer helpful folks to their network.
Listen, I get it: this sounds really, really conceited until you can internalize that your work matters, a lot, because what you’re doing is empowering your client to get closer to their ideal state. Think about a goal that matters to you enough that you’d pay thousands of dollars to work with someone to make it happen. You’re not paying for their skills, per se, you’re paying to get closer to that ideal version of yourself. That’s priceless.
Ask for the referral.
Tracking Your Funnel
Once the project is done, think about how you can ask for that referral either 30 or 60 days later. Think about what’s next for your client before the project ends so that you can have that conversation in advance and you’re not doing it from a place of desperation.
Also, think about how you’re going to track your work in your funnel. In the system, I built in a stats tracking template so that you can track your efforts month over month:
- Awareness moments (talks, connections to co-working spaces, workshops, social media posts)
- How much time it took of yours to get that done
- New leads created
- Consults scheduled as a result
- Consults completed as a result
- New clients closed
- Revenue gained from that funnel
- Referrals generated from these particular clients
Final Thoughts
As you think about how you’re developing your sales process, these funnel steps are how most businesses and nonprofits get from A to B to C and continuing the flywheel of referrals. If you simply do this and nothing else, you’ll at least have much more visibility on your existing sales funnel than you currently do. That can help you land new customers, new donors, you name it.
I hope that it helps.
Now, if you don’t want to do this alone — because I realize we’re like 20 minutes into the video by now — please, please, please reach out. Talk to me about how to make this work for you.
There are other questions and things that might be more applicable to your specific business or nonprofit that I didn’t even think to ask. In general, the template should be applicable to most service-based businesses.
Reach out, ask questions, let me know what you think, and how I can help.
