7 Types of consulting sales funnel that you must build in 2024! 

Businesses with easy buying processes are 62% more likely to win a high-value deal.

Sales funnels for consultants ease your buying process and thus give an exceptional customer journey.

As per a survey, over 570,000 websites leverage at least one sales funnel-building technology.

So, ready to unlock your business potential?

This blog covers the top 7 consulting sales funnel to boost revenue and the strategy to build an effective sales funnel for consultants.

So, let’s dive in.

What is a consulting sales funnel? 

A consulting sales funnel is a strategic model that helps you attract potential clients and nurture their interests to turn them into your paying clients.

The consulting sales funnel explains the entire client journey, enabling you to track the prospect’s stage and offer them a better customer experience.  

Importance of an effective consulting sales funnel 

1. Works as a framework to achieve your goals 

Sales funnels are designed to achieve varied goals, such as generating sales-ready leads, boosting customer engagement to close faster, increasing clients’ lifetime value, growing revenue, etc.

2. Helps you measure the leads’ progress 

You can evaluate the progress of your leads through various stages of the sales process. Moreover, it helps to understand how your leads behave in each funnel stage.

3. Boosts your sales efficiency 

Once you’ve built a sales funnel, you can set the engine into automation. For example, you can set email sequences to follow up with your ideal prospects.

4. Improves decision making 

You can measure your sales funnels to draw valuable insights about what efforts bring you great results. For example, you can identify the potential lead-generation channels that get you the maximum conversions.

5. Supports in scaling your consulting business  

The sales funnel enables you to handle large volumes of prospects to grow your business on a scale. 

6. Builds customer relationships and trust  

A well-designed consulting sales funnel helps nurture your prospects through personalized interactions and thus encourages building strong customer relationships and trust. 

What are the stages of a consulting sales funnel?

Stage 1: Awareness 

This stage aims to attract prospective clients and make them aware of your consulting business.

You must define your ICP (ideal customer profile) for effective targeting. Moreover, you must identify their challenges to create an impactful, targeted campaign.

Create and share helpful content like blogs, videos, and articles to create awareness about the common challenges of your prospects that your business can solve. 

Create and leverage whitepapers, industry reports, and eBooks as gated content to get their contact details in exchange for the value offered.

Moreover, run PPC, display, and social media ads to attract prospects or create awareness about your brand faster.  

Related read: 10 Influential tips to promote your consulting business!

Stage 2: Education of service 

Once your audience comes across your services, it’s time to develop their interest.

You need to engage and nurture prospects to show them the types of services you offer, in what way your services are helping people, and in which domain you are considered an expert.

Try to provide information about the possible solutions to their challenges and show how you can be one among them.

Utilize social media to connect, engage, and create brand awareness. Make an impact by creating communities, sharing customer success stories, etc.

Stage 3: Consideration 

Here, you aim to nurture prospects who’ve shown some kind of interest in buying your services.

User-generated content and social proofs (testimonials or past work) are great ways to persuade them to consider you as one of the possible solutions to their problems.

Moreover, conduct webinars on insightful topics highlighting your prospects’ pain points and offer downloadable guides and case studies to demonstrate the value of your services.

Stage 4: Desire 

To win a deal, you need to convince your potential customers and resolve all the doubts and queries that are stopping them from paying you.

So, in the fourth stage, you need to do everything to resolve your prospect’s objections via calls, in-person meetings, free consultancy, or more.

Show a trailer of how you will solve their problems and persuade them by offering special discounts through email campaigns.

Present tailored proposals to them with the best consulting pricing.

You need to conduct meaningful follow-ups via calls and emails to address their last-minute concerns and encourage them to buy.

Read related: How much should I charge for my consulting?

Stage 5: Purchasing decision  

Your efforts so far will work, and the prospects who are nurtured so far and have shown enough desire will become your customers.

This final step of closing passes through the negotiation of the deal, so you must use your negotiation skills to win the deal at the best price possible.  

Top 7 types of the sales funnel for consultants

1. Lead generation funnel 

A lead generation funnel is built to attract new potential clients and capture their contact details to nurture them to create more business opportunities. 

The ultimate goal of building this funnel is to generate a list of qualified leads for your consulting business. 

Efforts involve various digital marketing lead-generation tactics such as content creation, SEO, social media marketing, and paid advertising.

Here is a typical lead generation funnel for consultants looks like:

The funnel focuses on creating awareness through valuable content that enhances the leads’ interest in your consultancy services. 

Read related: 8 Best ways for lead generation for consultants – Must try!

2. Prospect nurturing funnel 

Companies that offer effective lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-worthy leads at a 33% lower cost.

The prospect nurturing funnel is designed to persuade qualified leads to consider you an ideal solution to their problems and buy your services. 

For example, if you’re a SaaS consultant, suppose you’ve generated leads through a paid ad campaign titled; “Empowering SaaS Business in Achieving Billion Dollar Success?“.

Now, you can nurture these leads by sending multiple personalized email campaigns discussing how you can help them achieve new heights of success.

Here’s one nurturing example of how you can build trust among those leads to buy your services: 

• Invite them to join your webinar that focuses on solving their problems. 
• Send case studies similar to their problems to help them decide faster. 
• Send an email to request to schedule a free consultation and present a practical roadmap on how you can help them grow massively. 
• Follow up on time with special offers to persuade them to pay you.

Nurturing efforts will help you persuade your prospects to consider you or win the deal. 

Want to drive more deals?

Build personalized drip campaigns to nurture leads and boost sales conversions.

Explore Marketing Automation

3. Partnering and networking sales funnel 

Building a partnering and networking funnel is an intelligent way to get more business opportunities.

Consultants use the partnering and networking funnel to connect with potential partners and thus build relationships for collaborative opportunities. 

For example, an investment consultancy can partner with consulting firms that share customers with the same persona, such as tax consultancy.

You can tap into new markets and attract more prospects by collaborating on projects, exchanging referrals, and supporting each other’s business growth. 

The journey of the consulting sales funnel looks like this: 

• Identify your partners with complementary services 
• Reach out to them via social platforms or direct contacts (emails or calls) 
• Pitch your proposals and discuss the collaboration benefits 
• Gain trust and build rapport through the sharing of thoughts and consistent communication 
• Set a partnering project defining terms and conditions 
• Collaborate on joint projects/events 
• Exchange referrals and track partnership success 

4. Webinar funnel

The webinar sales funnel can help achieve multiple objectives like brand awareness, identifying the interested leads to pitch your services, showing your expertise, or winning sales.

The journey of a webinar sales funnel to convert clients looks like this:

Best tips for building an effective webinar funnel: 

• Research to identify the most compelling topic for your webinar. 
• Promote the webinar/event through various marketing channels like social media and website to maximize attendees counts. 
• Prepare insightful and well-researched content during the webinar that adds value to the attendees. 
• Prepare a segmented list of prospects that attended and unattended the webinar to nurture them accordingly. 

Note that you will only achieve your goal with the webinar funnel if you deliver a high-quality experience in your webinar.

5. Sales follow-up funnel 

This funnel is for prospects who have already been pitched your services. 

For example, as a strategy consultant, you might often face situations when you set a meeting but don’t get a favorable response.

This can indicate that they might have some additional doubts or objections. In this case, you start by giving a follow-up call and understanding their objections.  

Also, you can send some case studies to showcase how you’ve served your past customers with similar problems.

You can offer a free consultation to give a trailer of what you can bring to their table.

Never miss a sales opportunity!

Set multichannel follow-up sequences to convert every prospect into a deal.

Explore Sequences

6. Referral sales funnel 

The likelihood of selling an existing client is 3x to 35x more compared to a new one.

So, you must build a referral sales funnel to incentivize your happy customers to get more business opportunities. 

Once you have a steady list of delighted customers, you can create a sales funnel to request referrals tactfully.  

Create lucrative offers for your existing customers and ask them for referrals in exchange. 

Also, introduce a referral tracking system to identify the sources of referrals, follow up promptly, and manage the funnel effectively. 

7. Upsell/cross-sell funnel 

Did you know? Upsells account for 70-80% of sales and are 68% more affordable than acquiring a new client.

You must consider building an upsell funnel for your consulting firm.

It helps to maximize your customers ‘ lifetime value by sending offers like relevant add-ons, upgrades, or complementary services.

The funnel enables you to present lucrative upsell and cross-sell offers through post-purchase email sequences.

7 Simple steps to build an effective sales funnel for consultants 

Step 1: Identify your prospects’ challenges 

Understanding your prospects’ challenges will help you tailor your services to meet their needs. 

Conduct thorough research, engage in conversations, and actively listen to your target audience to uncover their pain points. 

Further, define your buyer persona to craft persuading content. Buyer personas offer insight into the age, location, job title, company, challenges, motivations, etc.  

Step 2: Establish clear goals and objectives for your sales funnel 

Each type of sales funnel we’ve studied is built based on achieving some specific goals. 

For instance, the objectives of an upsell sales funnel are to generate more revenue from their existing clients or increase their customer lifetime value.

So, to build an effective consulting business sales funnel, firstly, determine what you want to achieve using it.

Step 3: Develop an enticing initial offer to attract potential clients 

Create lead magnets, such as a free e-book, webinar, or consultation session, that provide immense value to your prospects. 

Note that you must invest in creating high-converting landing pages to showcase your value propositions to persuade your prospective clients. 

The goal is to offer a taste of your expertise and leave them wanting more. So, create educational posts, videos, infographics, etc., to attract or capture leads. 

Offer detailed guides and case studies to build their interest. Further, organize webinars and live sessions to have in-depth discussions and create a desire for your services.  

Step 4: Evaluate and qualify leads 

Only some of the leads in the bucket will turn into paying customers. You need to identify and qualify them on various qualification criteria.

Building a custom lead scoring model will help in effective lead qualification to ensure you invest your time in nurturing sales-worthy leads.  

Want to focus on high-quality leads?

Build your custom automated lead scoring model to focus on sales-worthy leads.

Explore Lead Scoring CRM

Step 5: Nurture qualified leads with personalized interactions 

Once you’ve identified your qualified leads, it’s time to build trust and rapport through personalized interactions.  

Deploy effective nurturing strategies and techniques to win deals. For example, run personalized campaigns, offer tailored solutions, automate communications never to miss updates, etc.  

Moreover, engage with your prospects on social media and respond to all their queries.

Introduce a Chatbot/Live chat system to your landing pages to answer your prospects’ leads and capture their details.

Read related: 7 Powerful ways to automate the lead nurturing process!

Step 6: Close the deal by providing tailored solutions 

Overcome objections, negotiate, and craft customized proposals to showcase how your consulting services can drive tangible results for their business.

Be responsive to their questions and concerns and let your expertise shine.

Step 7: Measure and optimize the funnel 

Unfortunately, only 32% of companies evaluate their sales funnel performance.

However, without measuring success, you cannot get the desired results from your sales funnel.

So, after implementing your sales funnel, measure its results and the conversion rate. Also, A/B tests your consulting sales funnel by changing strategies adopted in each stage. 

Boost your consulting sales with Salesmate! 

Whether generating leads, nurturing prospects, visualizing sales opportunities, or optimizing sales, Salesmate is a powerful sales tool.

Here is an example of an automatic lead nurturing campaign using Salesmate’s Automation Journeys:

Salesmate CRM is your constant partner for boosting your sales; it offers business values like… 

• Built-in tools like Web Forms, Chatbot/Live Chat, and Meeting Scheduler for generating leads.
• Custom lead scoring to identify your potential customers. 
• A centralized lead management platform to get a 360-degree customer view and manage leads effectively.
• Omnichannel communications with Built-In calling, Smart Emails, and Text Messaging. 
• Automated lead nurturing campaigns to engage and persuade your clients. You’ll get free templates, too! 
• Account-based marketing to identify high-ticket deals to boost your revenue. 
• Multiple sales pipelines that will help you visualize the opportunities to close. 
• Mobile CRM app to facilitate your business from anywhere at any time. 
• Insightful reports and forecasting for better sales decision-making. 

Salesmate is one of the leading CRM for consulting businesses, trusted by 5000+ companies.

Want to grow your business? Take your FREE trial today!

Wrap up 

With an effective sales funnel, consultants can better identify highly interested leads and nurture them effectively to close deals faster.

The five stages of the consulting sales funnel involve awareness, education of services, consideration, desire, and purchasing.

Many companies take help from expert sales funnel consultants to build an effective consulting sales funnel.

However, you can build one on your own with a powerful strategy and the support of a smart tool and save the money that is to be spent on sales funnel experts.

Frequently asked questions