A competitive building materials manufacturer can’t afford a leaky sales funnel.
If you have an ineffective sales funnel, you’re losing prospective customers at every step — some after they hear about your brand, more after they sign up to receive more info about your products, and even more right before they would’ve bought something. Before long, that can really hurt your bottom line.
It’s prudent to plug the leaks in your funnel as soon as you can. Some of those leaks might be hard to notice as they silently do damage, but by learning what the common failure points of sales funnels are, you can make your customer journey airtight and keep bringing sales your way.
Below, we’ll go into more detail about the 3 ways your sales funnel might be leaking, and what you can do about it:
1. You Don’t Understand Your Customers’ Needs
An old maxim in business is “the customer is always right.” As a building materials manufacturer, you likely have several classes of customers, ranging from professionals like dealers and contractors, to end-consumers like homeowners.
In each case, if you want to keep your sales performance strong, you’ll have to actually understand and cater to each audience’s specific needs…or else they’ll drop out of your funnel and go to a brand that does know them better.
That raises the question, how do you know what your customers need? Just ask! According to SurveyMonkey, 85% of customers believe it’s important to share feedback with companies they buy from, so it shouldn’t be hard to get the insights you need.
Conduct some market research for each audience segment your products are sold to. Don’t only survey new prospects; interview loyal, longtime customers in exchange for a discount or other special deals. Ask what their pain points are, and inquire about their needs, beliefs, and desires.
Once you gather this info from both your professional and consumer audiences, create collateral that speaks directly to them. This can include articles, blog posts, videos, case studies, and email newsletters. Address the most common questions directly, and show how your product solves problems.
For example, if you’re a roofing manufacturer, homeowners looking for roofing materials and repair services will appreciate learning more about what makes your roof tiles especially durable, weather-resistant, and likely to last for many years to come.
For professional audiences (such as roofing contractors), you could upgrade your technical product spec sheets, and create more detailed how-to videos and support docs.
After building out a library of research-backed, customer-centric material, consider running online ads to get new prospects’ eyes on it. Make sure the right messaging reaches the right audience by building separate campaign to target each customer group. A Marketing Asset Management (MAM) solution is a great tool to organize your materials and measure the effectiveness of each asset. Adjust and create more content based on the response, as well as results that continue to come in from your surveys.
It can be that simple to plug a huge, common sales funnel leak…simply doing enough homework to enter the conversation in your prospects’ heads, and engaging them with valuable content, will keep more of them on the road to making a purchase.
2. Your Dealer or Contractor Locator Fails to Capture Leads
Another big hole that leads tend to fall through: a complete lack of any way to capture leads in the first place.
Specifically, many building materials manufacturers have a dealer or contractor locator page that simply has no lead capture mechanism.
This is a big lost opportunity. Your web visitors may be interested in making a purchase and might even go on to talk to a dealer, but without capturing their contact info, you’ll never know what happened after the fact. Not a good situation for your sales funnel!
[Embed video: https://www.tiktok.com/@biztips4u/video/7104853851693518126]
According to a Gartner survey quoted in Forbes, 58% of business leaders cite lead generation as a key challenge. The solution is simple: add lead capture functionality to your dealer or contractor locator. Allow prospective customers to submit inquiries, and thus self-identify as leads, to any dealer or pro they choose.
If you want to implement this for your website, Bullseye is in your corner. As the leading locator software solution, Bullseye enables you to capture leads every time a customer lands on your “Where to Buy” pages with a simple, intuitive form. You can make it a snap for them to reach out to local pros and ask questions on products and services.
From there, you and your local partner can follow up with these customers to share information, nurture the relationship, and build trust. Your customers, when retained as leads in your funnel, are no longer lost opportunities, but active participants in a buyer journey that feels natural for them.
In the end, your improved sales will speak for themselves.
3. Your Sales and Marketing Assets Are Hard to Find
You might have some great sales and marketing content on hand. However, is that content being used?
Moreover, can your dealers, contractors, and distributors — as channel partners who can leverage your marketing materials to great effect — access those content assets with ease?
If not, you’ve got another major fissure in your sales funnel. In a 2018 SiriusDecisions Command Center presentation cited by GET LIFT, 65% of channel partners referred to either poor content quality or the total inability to access content as a top business challenge. When your channel partners can’t find the content that helps them make persuasive arguments for your brand, you’re leaving lots of revenue on the table.
Fortunately, an excellent solution exists: a robust, leading marketing asset management (MAM) tool called RevBase, a platform owned and operated by Bullseye Locations. With RevBase, you can allow channel partners to access any marketing content, whether it’s available as a digital download or needs to be sent to a queue for printing.
The software is your one-stop shop for organizing every kind of marketing asset imaginable, sharing it securely across your company and externally with designated stakeholders, and tracking content downloads to understand how well each asset is performing.
If you’re serious about improved sales, don’t allow your distributors, dealers, and installers to feel for another second that your marketing and sales content is a hassle to find.
Enable your channel partners with all the collateral they’ll need to endorse your products, and you’ll see the positive impact on your bottom line.
Plug the Holes in Your Building Materials Sales Funnel Before It’s Too Late
As your competitors get wise to lead acquisition and customer relationship best practices, and start to strengthen their sales funnels accordingly, it’s very easy for prime market share opportunities to slip away. There’s no reason to let this happen to your brand.
You can act now to start turning the tide. Ensure that you understand the unique needs of every customer segment you serve, that you’re capturing leads through your dealer and contractor locator, and you’re sharing key marketing materials with your channel partners at all times.
Want to start repairing your sales in a fast, streamlined way? Use Bullseye for a best-in-class locator page that actually generates leads, and the leading MAM platform RevBase to keep your channel partners equipped with content that drives sales.
To see how these two leading solutions can restore your sales funnel to full health and profitability, get in touch to schedule a demo today.
Get Advanced Marketing Resources
Learn how building materials manufacturers can intercept demand and increase market share using their locators. Download our free guide today for advanced practices and insights!
